Dedication

I dedicate this book to everyone in my life, be they family, friend or associate; you have all helped shape, inspire, educate and motivate me; you are all my life coaches, and I love being a part of your team.

CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE: Trouble from the Start

CHAPTER TWO: The Wonder Years

CHAPTER THREE: On the Rollercoaster

CHAPTER FOUR: Street Gangs and Gang Shows

CHAPTER FIVE: Cake and Soup

CHAPTER SIX: The Bus of Opportunity

CHAPTER SEVEN: Dead by 28

CHAPTER EIGHT: Love, Love, Love

CHAPTER NINE: Blowing Stuff Up

CHAPTER TEN: Medicine for the Heart

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Burning on the Inside

CHAPTER TWELVE: The Bloke in the Overalls

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Breaking Every Rule

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: A Town Called Poowong

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Riding the Gravitron

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: The Show’s On the Road

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: A Heck of a Ride

POSTSCRIPT: The Greatest Drama of All

COPYRIGHT

PROLOGUE

I’m walking down the street in the winter sunshine. A bloke ambling down the other side of the road sees me and does a double take; a big grin breaks across his face. ‘Hey, Kenny!’ he calls. ‘Got time for a beer?’ I’ve never seen him before in my life.

My name’s not Kenny, I’m not a plumber, I don’t fix portaloos, and I don’t have a lisp. Yet somehow, about half of the population of Australia believes all of those things about me.

After I appeared as Kenny Smyth in Kenny, the film that I made with my brother Clayton, a film that broke box-office records and landed us a fistful of awards and nominations, people would come up to me and ask, ‘That went well for you. Have you ever thought about having a go at acting?’

Funny really, when all I’ve ever wanted to do was to perform. On the stage, in films, ad libbing in front of an audience, hosting a TV show, dancing, singing, drama, comedy — I love it all. It just took me a very long and winding road full of sidetracks to make it my life.

Right from the first instant my brain started recording memories, all I’ve ever really wanted to do is to entertain people. In particular, to make them laugh. Every kid has a dream, but you never know if it’s going to come to fruition. Some people spend their lives trying and get worn out by the process, and some people never give up. I’d like to think I’m one of those people who never gives up. But if I was plotting my life on Google Maps, with birth as the starting point and success as my destination, I’ve clearly clicked the button that says ‘take the longest route’.

Even reaching what some would see as the ultimate destination in my career, the road couldn’t stop there — I still had something to prove. Being in one hit movie was never the end game for me.

Some of the most exciting parts of my life have been played out in front of the camera or on stage. Part of me is in every role I play, some roles more than others. But there have been other thrilling moments in my life that took place when there was no camera in the room. They were captured in my memory, and the memories of my family and friends. Now is my chance to let them spill onto paper.

If entertainment was a city at the end of a highway, I sure as heck managed to take quite a lot of dirt tracks to get there. Those back roads take longer and they have quite a few potholes to trap the unsuspecting traveller, plus plenty of distractions along the way. But I’m the kind of guy who, even when I know I’m on the wrong road, keeps driving anyway, just to see where that road ends up. Some people call that distraction. I call it discovery.

I had a few compasses to guide me on my way, though. One was a moral compass that my family gave me, another was the compass of adventure, and a third was the wild one — you just spin the needle and see where it lands. Those three together have made the journey a thrilling ride.

Everyone says the trip should be every bit as much fun as the destination, and in my case it certainly has been that. I’ve driven from the south to the north of Australia in a Kingswood with Paul Hogan; I’ve faced up to villains armed only with a high-pressure water gun; I’ve navigated the world’s smallest car through a herd of agitated baboons.

The journey has been amazing. The sights have been enthralling. The life lessons are invaluable. Does it all make a good story? Let’s find out. I’d like you to hop in the passenger’s seat and take a drive with me along the long road to overnight success.

CHAPTER ONE

TROUBLE FROM THE START

I was still in nappies at the time of my first performance. My parents had friends around for dinner one evening, and they were all in the living room enjoying a beverage before the meal. Spotting an audience in the waiting, I came into the room, pulled down my nappy, plonked my bum on the polished floorboards and farted. It made the most fantastic ‘ba, ba, ba’ vibration noise against the floor. I burst into laughter, hopped up and ran out.

Dad looked at Mum and said, ‘That one’s going to be trouble.’

My father Ron’s family were carnie folk, which may explain my desire to entertain before all else, including potty training. Dad went on the carnival circuit when he was just two years old. His father, William Jacobson, had been a wharfie but he’d had to give away heavy work when he developed a heart condition. With the encouragement of some show-people friends, he decided to spend a few years working the carnivals. Soon my grandfather was the proud owner of a Chair-o-Plane and an Ocean Wave. Kids these days would be familiar with the High Swinger, which is a modern version of the Chair-o-Plane. The Chair-o-Plane was a flying chair type of carousel, raw and fundamental, but it gave plenty of thrills. It consisted of a set of tractor seats suspended on chains from a wooden frame covered by a canvas canopy, with an old car engine providing the power. The Ocean Wave was equally rustic: not much more than a circular wooden seat that spun in an undulating motion, it was effectively the original version of the Matterhorn.

In 1937 Grandad packed up his Chevrolet truck with Nan and four boys and set out to tour the shows in country towns in Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia. The four boys were my dad, Ron, and my uncles Frank, Bill and Norm. The eldest boy, Alan, stayed behind with his grandmother in Fairfield, suburban Melbourne, so he could finish his last year of school.

Life on the road was rough in those days and they had to solve any problems that cropped up using a mix of ingenuity and brute force. On the way to one of their first carnivals, my grandfather’s old Chev drifted onto some loose gravel on the shoulder of a country road. It wasn’t exactly barrelling along at the time, so in exquisite slow motion it lifted and tipped on its side, passenger door down. Grandad William was a big fellow, about 130 kilograms worth of manhood. He fell on top of Nan, who was carrying Dad on her lap (as you did in those days). The other three boys were rolling about like marbles in the back seat. Once he regained his composure and figured out which way was up, Grandad climbed up out of the driver’s-side door like an armoured tank commander emerging from the turret. Eventually, with the help of a local farmer and his tractor, the Chev was pulled upright and set on its way again, its occupants a little ruffled and squashed but otherwise intact.

After a few years on the road, Dad’s parents decided to throw in the carnie life. My grandfather William still had some problems with his heart, and my grandmother wanted to see her eldest son in Melbourne. So they headed back, stopping along the way to do bits and pieces of casual work — picking grapes and tomatoes, mostly.

Dad’s father took the family out to Maribyrnong, which was then a semi-rural area west of Melbourne with homes and farmhouses scattered among the paddocks, set on the river of the same name. There they pitched their tent on a block of land. And that was home for the Jacobson family for the next ten or twelve years.

The tent had just one door at the front, made out of flimsy three-ply timber but with a rock-solid security system that would foil any burglar foolish enough to have a go: a piece of rope looped around the doorframe. The furnishings were sparse: an ice chest to store food, a tallboy cupboard and a sideboard for cups and plates, a wooden stool and a couple of old chairs. Nan and Grandad had a double bed and Dad and Norm slept in another double bed beside them, while Billy had a single bed at the foot of Dad and Norm’s double. Frank slept in the living area on a bed that doubled as a seat at mealtimes.

Houses these days have more toilets than people, but back then the family’s one and only toilet was way down near the back lane, a cubicle made up of hessian stretched around four posts and topped off with a tin roof. There was no sewerage in those days, so this toilet was of a kind lovingly known as a thunderbox. (That name would become the name of the business that my brother Clayton and I set up to make the film Kenny: Thunderbox Films.) A thunderbox was not much more than a bucket sitting inside a wooden structure. Once a week or so the nightman (so called because he did his rounds at night) came to collect the pans and take them away. Having had a week to stew, the contents had a fair aroma, which is why most toilets were placed as far away from a house as possible, and Dad’s tent home was no exception.

Although the Jacobson family always had plenty of laughs, it was a tough life. I have always joked that Dad was so poor he couldn’t even afford to pay attention. In their street, they were known as the ‘tent kids’. The highlight of the year for Dad was when his brothers would go to the local tip and build him a bike for Christmas.

Things got tougher still in 1943, when Dad was eight years old. My granddad died right in front of my dad on the floor of the kitchen. Dad watched as his little sister, Irene, just a baby, crawled over to the body. With Grandad’s death the family were left destitute: hardly any money, a leaky tent for a home, and Dad’s two older brothers serving in the army.

For all that, bad times aren’t always the worst times, Dad reckons: ‘if you’ve got half a brain you can learn from them and if you are patient enough some good can come of them.’ After Grandad died, the men of the district got together and built a stronger frame and a tin roof for the tent and put in wooden flooring. It made a huge difference to the family, even though they were still a long way from living in the lap of luxury.

Dad has plenty of happy stories to tell about that time in his life. At night he would snuggle down in the warm bed, the blanket pulled up to his chin; as he puts it in his book — Kenny’s Dad: The True and Amazing Life, Laughs and Lessons of Ron Jacobson — ‘with the feeling of total security that only a small boy without a care in the world can feel’.

My mother Jill, too, grew up in incredibly tough times by my measure. She was the second youngest of eight children, with five brothers and two sisters. My grandfather, George Sheppard, built a bungalow out the back of their house in Essendon and the three eldest boys slept out there while the girls and the youngest two boys slept inside the house, where a bed to yourself was a luxury they couldn’t afford. The eldest boy, Cliff, went off to war at the age of seventeen, having lied about his age in his haste to serve his country. Mum was only two when Cliff left, so she had no memory of him leaving, only that he was gone. She really only met her big brother for the first time three years later, when a soldier appeared at their door. It was her brother Cliff, Mum was told, back from fighting in Borneo.

Uncle Cliff grew into a most resourceful man. When he was in need of a little extra coin, he would sell his homing pigeons, knowing that as soon as the new owner let them out of their cages to train them they would do exactly what they had already been trained to do: fly straight home to Uncle Cliff. I believe he sold them many times over with very successful results each and every time.

Mum’s brother Robin joined the army at 21 and was a soldier for 25 years. He was a decorated war hero who saw more than his fair share of action, serving two twelve-month stints — in Vietnam and in the Korean War. He returned home safe to his family time and time again, only to be killed by a car in Cooper Street, Essendon, a few hundred metres from his family home. I was only five at the time but it was a day I still remember. It was one of many deaths that our family has experienced, but it was a first for me.

The way I see it, an attraction to fire and explosives was written in my DNA. My parents met in an explosives factory, so you could say there was a spark there right from the beginning; a fuse was lit that led to a baby boom.

As a kid I loved to hear about how Mum and Dad met. The explosives factory was in Maribyrnong, where Dad was raised. The factory building is still there; it no longer operates, but back in the day it was one of the big employers in town. It occupied a huge site covering 128 hectares, with hundreds of buildings surrounded by earth mounds designed to direct any accidental explosions upwards rather than outwards.

The factory had a large team of office staff and clerks, and Dad was one of them. He started work there when he was sixteen and continued working for the government for another 38 years, but it was when he was around 22 that he noticed a young lady by the name of Jill Sheppard.

Mum was a young secretary, five years Dad’s junior. Dad described her as one of the most beautiful girls in the office; he couldn’t help but be distracted by her. And Mum in turn talked about Dad as this fun, fit man she couldn’t help but notice.

They married and had some great years together, but they were both busy people. Dad was totally absorbed by sport: boxing, cricket and football had his full attention when he wasn’t working. For Mum, it was the world of calisthenics, and for both of them we three kids had their attention too. There may not have been enough time for each other, and that eventually took its toll.

My parents broke up when I was four years old. I have few memories of the separation itself, but after Dad married Gloria I remember being introduced to a tall, fit young man called David at a picnic area in the Organ Pipes National Park, just outside Melbourne. ‘This is Mum’s special friend,’ I was told. Mum went on to marry David — their honeymoon present was my little sister Natalie, who turned up precisely nine months later.

The thing I remember most about Gloria is that she made amazing soups, and I do love soup; on Saturdays when we went to see Dad, she would give me bowls of her delicious broth. When I think of Gloria I can smell her perfume and those bowls of soup. Gloria passed away in 1983. Some time after that, Dad went along to a Parents without Partners event and met Lorraine, who would become his third fiancée, though they never bothered with getting married. Lorraine was always immaculately presented, beautifully made up and elegantly dressed. She was forever ready with a smile and a laugh, but she was also very ladylike and quite proper. Dad always had a joke up his sleeve and his jokes were often a bit risqué. Lorraine spent much of her time saying ‘Oh, Ron, stop it,’ but she clearly enjoyed every minute of Dad’s jokes and banter and she never really wanted him to stop it at all. As a result, Dad never did.

To this very day, Mum and Dad live almost equal distance away on either side of the explosives factory, which is the very thing that brought them together and led to me. Every time I drive past I contemplate the fact that if it were not for that factory, I would not exist. For all the bullets, shells, mortars and mines that factory produced, it also produced me. Its mission statement was to create things that kill, but it was also the very thing that caused my parents to meet and therefore it’s the very reason I came into being.

My life began at the Essendon hospital in Melbourne, Victoria. The year was 1970 and the date was the nineteenth of March. There I sat in Mum’s arms, her third child but not her last. I was introduced to my brother Clayton, seven, and my sister Kim, three, and briefly met my dad before he headed off on a cricket trip. Dad ran the Maribyrnong boxing club as well as being a keen amateur cricketer and footballer; like most men of his era, he wasn’t one to let a baby stand in the way of a sporting fixture.

Like all mothers giving birth, Mum had done an amazing job. I, however, was so shocked by the event that I didn’t speak for over a year. I just sat back and observed everything, and although I wasn’t saying much I kept myself busy with sleeping, crying and soiling my nappy. That was all that was expected of me at that point in my life and I wasn’t going to let my parents down, a trait that I can honestly say I still have to this very day — the desire not to disappoint, not the sleeping, crying and pooping.

In hospitals back then, babies were taken from their mothers and put into a nursery. There were allocated times for mothers to rest and times for the mums to spend with their newborns. At the end of mum-and-bub time, the nurses would come to collect the babies with a cart. At the hospital where I was born, they used a trolley that had four levels and carried three babies per level, a payload of twelve bubs in total. But during my stay there, when they did a head count at the end of their collection rounds, there were only ever eleven. Mum would hide me under her bed sheets and tell them that I had already been collected, so I knew I had a loving mother from the get-go.

Dad returned from his cricket trip not long after, and together we headed to our family home in Avondale Heights, in Melbourne’s western suburbs. Our house was situated in the middle of a street, not quite at the bottom of one of the hills that marked either end. Later in life these hills would supply much joy as well as a fair share of pain. One in particular was a rather steep incline, and pretty much any trip down it on a skateboard or in a billycart was asking for trouble, and sometimes you didn’t even have to ask.

Mum and Dad had built our house using every last dollar they could save. Always a great manager of money, my mother had purchased the block of land when she was only nineteen, two years before my parents had married.

When I came on the scene our house had three bedrooms with a large front garden and a truly gargantuan back garden. As a child I could only dream of kicking a footy the full length of it. As I got older that dream was easily accomplished, as it was really only about 30 metres long, but to me our yard was as wide as a suburb and the length of the earth. I still think of that back garden whenever I smell freshly cut grass in summer; maybe that’s because I believe for a kid, the best memories are made in summer.

Luckily I don’t have to rely on my memory to imagine the yard or the home, because Mum and my stepfather, David, still live there. David has worked with his hands all his life as a welder, a boilermaker and looking after the council’s parks and gardens, so he and my Uncle Len — Mum’s sister Val’s husband — worked together to extend the house when we outgrew it. I only realise now just how wonderful it is to be able to keep going through the front door of the house that has the stories and secrets of your youth buried in every layer of paint and every crack and stain. A house can eventually become a member of the family, and that particular house has seen me and my brother and sisters come, grow and go, and the coming and growing of all of our children.

Though that house was the centre of our world, we made other homes for ourselves. Clay, Kim and I would build a make-do house out in the back yard using blankets and cushions, a few sheets and some bits of timber against a tree. ‘We’re camping out tonight,’ we would tell Mum. To me it would feel as though we had spent the whole night out there, though the next morning Mum would assure me we had come back in at nine o’clock or so.

We three kids were quite a team. Clay was my big brother in every sense of the word. Number one, he’s older than me by seven years. Clay has always had the physique of my uncles, with broad shoulders a couple of axe handles across, and strong with it. I always wanted to be like my older brother, and I wanted to be his frame too. I used to try to eat more, and later do weights, to try to grow big and strong like Clay. It wasn’t until I was 21 that I started to bulk up, but Clay was always a big, bull-shouldered bloke. Because of that seven-year gap between us there was never any rivalry. We shared a room, which might have driven him mad at times but I loved it. I remember one night when I was a little kid I wet my bed and Clay let me sleep in his bed with him for the rest of the night. Not every brother would do that, I bet. If there was trouble, Clay would be standing beside you at the drop of a hat — even before the hat had left the hand that was dropping it. He has a big heart too, always willing to share knowledge and always there to back me up. And he is one person who is guaranteed to make me laugh pretty much every time I speak to him.

Kim and I have always shared a very special bond. We are only three years apart, and as kids we had that best-friend closeness. In our teenage years we used to go to nightclubs together with a bunch of our friends. I’d do Kim’s hair and help her choose her outfits and check her makeup. I’d do anything for Kim: if I was going to the shops I’d even buy her ladies’ products if she needed them. Kim has the spine of my Dad’s side of the family — in many ways she’s the toughest of us all — and she has my mum’s heart. Kim is a nurturer, and she is always the one that reminds me how proud she is of me. If I’m on television even for a moment, I’ll get a text saying, ‘just saw yr smiling face on TV’. She is one of earth’s angels, with a smile and a laugh that can infect a whole room. If joy was a virus, Kim would be incurable.

Natalie came along seven years after me and I always felt very protective of her. I felt that I had to play the big scary brother and look after this little blond-haired, beautiful girl, but it turns out Nat’s got a mind of her own and can look after herself. She’s forever got a smile on her face, which is just a natural product of her bubbly personality. I always referred to her as my little sister, but part of growing up is realising that you can stop being the big brother and become friends instead.

As a counterpoint to the serenity of my childhood, the acting bug took a bite out of me pretty young, leading to that first performance of mine in front of my parents and their friends. It was simple yet effective, involving nothing more than a bare bum, a flat surface and a bit of gas. My second public performance had a little more finesse to it. One year we trekked down to Phillip Island to see the penguin parade. It’s a marvel to see the wild penguins emerging from the sea like Ursula Andress in the Bond movie Dr. No. Then they waddle across the sand to their burrows, not at all like Ursula Andress. Families would throw their picnic rugs on a grassy hillside and sit themselves down with sandwiches and thermoses to watch the show. A park ranger would climb up a ladder to a timber box, grab a megaphone and announce, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, in a few minutes the penguin parade will start.’

Penguins waddle to their own timetable, so there was usually a bit of a wait. All the kids would run down to the sand to play until the birds showed up. I’ve always loved building things, so I set myself to crafting a stunner of a sandcastle. Then another kid ran over and did what he loved best, which was kicking things down. I sat back on my heels and watched while he flattened my creation. Then I just started from scratch and built another sandcastle. Wouldn’t you know it: Billy the sandcastle bomber ran back across and flattened it. I just kept going and set up another castle. The sandcastle bomber would do another flyby and flatten my masterpiece. And another. Smash. And another.

Through it all, the crowds up on the hill started to watch our support act, and they became engrossed in the drama. I eventually got sick of Billy’s devastatingly effective flybys and decided to put a foot out on his approach, with spectacular results. He flew face first into the sand, putting an end to his bombing raid. At that point the crowd all cheered, applauded and yelled, ‘Good onya kid.’

I am reliably informed that after our spectacular matinee show the penguins were a bit of an anticlimax.

As kids we were always putting on a show. It probably happens less these days, but back then the neighbours would pop in and while the grownups were chatting, the kids would come up with some ideas for a show. Then we’d set up a makeshift stage using the opening between our kitchen and the lounge room as our theatre’s proscenium arch and perform for our captive audience.

That was just the way my family was. Dad wouldn’t call himself an actor, which is amusing in itself because he has appeared in a fair number of films now, but he has always been a performer and an entertainer. He did stand-up comedy when I was a kid and he was involved in sporting clubs where he’d get up and do a bit of a routine and have everyone in stitches. He was the funniest guy I knew, and he still is. With Dad and his brothers, normal conversations were like riddles, even when they weren’t trying to be funny. The family had a vernacular that was uniquely Australian: everything had a different name. You wouldn’t just go to the toilet, you were going to splash your boots. If something was a waste of time, Dad’s mum would say, ‘You might as well rub your arse with a brick.’

Mum has always been deeply involved in performance, too, and has taught calisthenics for more than 50 years. She set up the Avonde Calisthenics College back in the 1960s, so I grew up surrounded by performers and costumes and stage props. I’d come home after school and there would be girls getting private lessons in our house; on Wednesday nights there would be a group of ladies there meeting for calisthenics. Some of my mates found it fascinating, but it was nothing to me to come home and find girls in leotards dancing around our house.

The seed of entertainment was constantly being watered in our house. Someone was always doing something to amuse, or entertain, or scare someone else. When Kim had her friends over for a slumber party, Clay and I had to hand over our room to the girls, but we didn’t give it up without a fight. Clay was very inventive about it; he has always been good at setting up sound and visual effects, which is why no one was surprised when, later on, his journey to become a film director he worked on special effects for movies. He would rig up wires so that we could pull a string and cups would magically rattle in their cupboards, or hide a speaker in a wardrobe that would emit ghostly moaning sounds or spooky music. It never failed to work very satisfactorily. One time, a friend of Kim’s got so scared that she jumped off the top bunk to get away and landed fair and square on another girl’s head. To us boys that was gold, just hilarious.

Kim was very easy to scare, so she made a tempting target. If you tickled her, she could kick you to death without a worry, but if you scared her she would scream loud enough to scare the warts off a witch. Even in my teens I would still cook up ways to scare Kim. More than once I would be coming home from a nightclub or band practice at one in the morning, and as I walked up the driveway I would hear a car approaching. I could tell it was Kim’s little Datsun Stanza, and I’d think to myself, ‘How opportune.’ Off I would go and hide in a bush or behind the thick vine that ran beside the stairs to our front door. I’d wait quietly and as Kim walked up the stairs — bang, I would jump out in front of her, and she would shriek loud enough to wake the neighbourhood and kill a brown dog with shock while she was at it.

CHAPTER TWO

THE WONDER YEARS

I get such a great feeling from camping; give me a campfire and a foldout chair and I’m as happy as a cow in a village full of vegans. As far back as my small mind can remember, every holiday or long weekend my family and I would jump in a car and head to a camping spot or caravan park near some form of water, be it river, lake, bay or ocean.

I love being on the road. Nothing puts a smile on my dial faster than the words ‘road trip’. The other day, Mum and I started swapping some of our favourite memories of road trips. The first that came to mind was one in our old Mini at Easter. I was only three at the time, and Clay, Kim and I were all in the back ploughing through our chocolate eggs, at no risk of putting on weight or having our teeth rot due to the fact that we had more of the chocolate on our faces than we had in our mouths. The day was as hot as hell and we each had a pillow. A scuffle broke out and one of the feather-filled pillows burst.

The only form of air conditioning in the Mini was the windows-down option, so the cabin was instantly turned into one of those money booths you see on game shows, except it was feathers flying around, not cash — and we weren’t going to win anything. The only element of suspense was whether Dad was going to crash the car or throw us from it.

Dad pulled the car over to the side of the road and looked into the back to discover his three children now looked like oversized birds. Our faces were completely covered in feathers that had stuck to our chocolate-coated noggins.

For me, the real camping memories start four years after that with a trip to Ocean Grove, down on the coast of Victoria. We were walking distance to both the beach and the Barwon River, which is an ocean-fed river, so this spot had the best of everything. I spent so much time swimming there, I knew the fish and sharks by name. There were plenty of other kids too, and I remember meeting my first ‘holiday friend’, a young girl from another caravan, who I would play with. There are photos of me with this girl and most likely we played together every day we were at Ocean Grove, but I have no idea what her full name was or where she is today. All I know is that her name was Lisa, and I thought she was pretty wonderful.

Ocean Grove was our camping destination of choice for several years, then we made the big commitment: we took a permanent site at the Zeally Bay caravan park in Torquay on the surf coast of Victoria. If there’s one thing that is a constant in caravan parks other than caravans and tents, it’s kids cruising around on their bikes; it’s what you did, as much as breathing or eating or swimming. So one Christmas I took my new bike to Torquay. When I say ‘new’, strictly speaking not all of that bike was new: we didn’t have enough money for a whole new one. By this time my stepfather, David, was on the scene and he could fix anything, so he would take the bike into his shed filled with tools and make it pretty much as good as new.

It was a bike with one red Skyway Tuff 2 plastic rim at the rear. Tuff plastic rims were as cool at that time as The Fonz punching a jukebox to get it to play a song, which was very cool indeed. I got a new pair of handlebars and a new seat, which turned an old dragster into a pretty flash makeshift BMX. I would ride that BMX-lookalike around the caravan park all day almost every day.

Like any good caravan park, Zeally Bay had a recreation room, and in the rec room there were a few billiard tables and pinball machines such as the KISS, and computer games like Galaga, Space Invaders, all the classics. That’s where we used to hang out with our mates when we weren’t swimming or riding our bikes. The jukebox would play loud and in my mind the soundtrack of those times was just about all Mondo Rock songs: ‘Come Said the Boy’ and ‘Cool World’ are the two I remember best, with a little bit of The Angels thrown in for good measure — ‘Am I Ever Going To See Your Face Again’ and ‘Shadow Boxer’. Those songs played over and over on that jukebox, so now when I hear them I’m immediately back in Torquay, riding my bike around and watching Clayton and Kim hanging out with their friends in the rec room.

One time in the rec room there was a guy playing pool, and because Kim liked this guy, she was urging him on to win. Just as he was about to take a shot, she crouched down behind the pocket he was aiming at with her eyes in line with the top of the table and said, ‘Come on, try and sink it in here.’ I think this guy was quite keen on Kim too; trying hard to impress her, he gave the ball a good whack and it flew up over the pocket and cracked her right in the eye. Instead of black ball corner pocket, it was white ball in blackened eye socket.

Above and beyond black eyes, though, we made some good friends during our times at Torquay. And the ones we didn’t make, we brought with us. The Boseleys, for instance: they were our friends and neighbours, and most years they stayed at Torquay too. Ray Boseley and Clayton in particular were best mates, friends for life. Later they went through Swinburne Film and Television School together, but even back then they were making videos on a little 8mm camera. They’d plan and script these little comedy videos and film them throughout the year and even some at the caravan park, then they would set up a projector beside the caravan and all our friends would come and sit outside to watch the show. We’d plonk ourselves down on our deck chairs with blankets and drinks and nibbles and watch these little films on a bed sheet strung up as the screen. Many years later, when we watched the preview of Kenny, my mind took me back to those days at Torquay, watching Clay and Ray’s movies amongst the caravans.

When you’re a kid, there are certain times and places that are magic. They’re special, set apart. It might be a treehouse, or a friend’s back yard, or a particular holiday. For me there was a whole series of these special times and they mostly centred around one particular place: Moorabbee Lodge Caravan Park, at Lake Eppalock in country Victoria.

After four years or so of holidays at Torquay, Lake Eppalock became the new place we went to for the summer holidays. Every year we would spend school holidays there and the occasional long weekend. This place was heaven for me because there was just so much to do. I swam, waterskied, rode dirt bikes, played pinball, and just hung out with all the other kids. There was always a horde of us who came year after year and were firm friends for the duration of every holiday.

Moorabbee Lodge was all of my Christmases and Easters from the age of fourteen up until I was eighteen. As a kid you’ve got a heightened sense of excitement around those holidays; in fact, I still get that around holiday time, no matter what I have planned. But as a boy becoming a young man, those were the best days of my life. That was where I first started having mature conversations and relationships with girls — at least, I thought so. I was part of a tight group, about 25 of us, one of those groups where you have a girlfriend for a while and then you break up with her, then she ends up with one of your friends, and you end up with one of the other girls in the group. Inside this bubble of friendship, you all bounce around with one another.

There’s something special about going back to the same place for family holidays every year, too, especially if it is as magical as Lake Eppalock was to me. You build rituals around it. It all started well before we left home. Even as a kid, you knew you had to look the part, so in the lead-up to our holiday I would do weights to get in better shape, even though in those days I was boxing at my dad’s gym, so I was actually fairly lean and fit. Back then we weren’t afraid of the sun: we saw it as a friend that could make you browner and therefore more attractive, rather than an enemy that could burn you and cause you to leave the earth before your time. In the weeks before Christmas I would sit in our back garden in my shorts and slap on oceans of Hawaiian Tropic Dark Tanning Oil until I smelt like a coconut plantation, to make sure I was brown before I got to the caravan park.

The body had to be brown but the hair needed sun streaks, so the other part of my ritual was to rub lemon juice through my hair to get some natural highlights going — if you consider rubbing a lemon on your head a natural act. I’d lie out on the trampoline in our back yard, baking in the sun while exuding the aroma of a tropical cocktail with my coconut-oiled body and my lemon-scented head.

Back then I had energy in seemingly endless supply, the sort of energy you would give anything to have as you get a little older. On a typical day I would get up in the morning, get straight on my dirt bike and go and ride that for hours; in the incredible heat and wearing all the padded gear, I’d be streaming with sweat the whole time.

I’ve ridden motorbikes all my life. By the time we started going to Moorabbee Lodge I had my own dirt bike, which I had saved up for with my paper-round money, doing odd jobs — anything to scrape together some extra dollars. After I’d been saving for a year, I had a little over $500 to put towards it. When a second-hand Yamaha YZ80H became available at a local motorbike shop for $700, Mum and David kicked in the extra couple of hundred dollars so I could get it. Everyone says a house will be your biggest purchase in life: I say frogbog. No purchase in my life has come within a wolf’s howl to me buying that bike. A house might have cost a whole lot more, but you couldn’t buy the way I felt buying that bike for all the beer in Belgium.

After riding around for a few hours I’d race back in the blazing sun, park my bike, run down to the lake and dive in for a swim. Then I’d sunbathe with some friends, go and have lunch, then go waterskiing on the lake for a few hours. Our family couldn’t afford a boat but most of my friends at the caravan park had them, so I could always hook up with another family and go skiing with them.

After an afternoon’s session of skiing, I would head up to the showers with my mate Greg Calder and talk about what boat we would buy when we were older, what car we would get, and what girl we had our eye on. Pretty much the same conversations that all teenage boys were having right across Australia, except ours were being yelled over the walls of public showers for all to hear. We’d have our showers, splash on a generous quantity of Brut 33 and head over to the recreation hall to meet up with all of our buddies. In the Moorabbee Lodge rec room there were the obligatory pinball machines, a ping-pong table, a jukebox and a pool table. All through the year I’d save up every twenty-cent coin I could lay my hands on, keeping them all in a little bucket that I would take with me to Moorabbee Lodge so that every day I could play the pinnies and the jukebox. The soundtrack of my life back then consisted of two songs: ‘If You Leave Me Now’ by Chicago, and ‘Rain’ by Dragon. Over the course of a summer we listened to so many songs — AC/DC and Bon Jovi featured strongly too — but those are the two songs that, even now, instantly take me back to that rec room.

One of my greatest athletic achievements occurred at Moorrabee Lodge because that was where I won an Ironman competition. This was not just any old Ironman. Competitors had to swim across a part of the inlet, which would only have been about 100 metres across and 100 metres back. Then we had to run to the top of the hill out the front of the caravan park and back, which was about two kilometres all up. At the very end of it, you had to eat a raw egg and a raw sausage, and scull a can of Solo. I was running third, and unfortunately for the two people in front of me, I loved raw sausages, and the idea of eating a raw egg did not concern me in the least. There was quite a distance between me and Brett, the boy who was coming first, because he used to run for the Victorian state squad. Brett loved running, but he could not stand the idea of swallowing a raw sausage, and he had considerable trouble stomaching the raw egg. I quickly moved from third place to second and then to first just by standing there, because both Brett and the boy who was coming second were struggling to swallow the uncooked menu. When my turn came, bang — I knocked back the egg, banged down the sausage, sculled the can of Solo and won my first and only Ironman competition. It might have only been the Moorabbee Lodge Ironman, but it was victory all the same.

My other memorable performance at Moorabbee Lodge was more theatrical. Word had spread of a grave nearby that was haunted. There was a track that led out of the caravan park, over a hill and on to the dirt bike track, and on the other side of the fence from this track was a little graveyard. In there was the grave of a lady and her daughter, and the rumour was that this woman had tragically passed away while giving birth to her little girl. Around the caravan park the story went that at night, on a full moon, the ghost of the mother could be seen standing up on the hill holding her child.

We heard from some of the kids in the park that a group of them were going to head up to the top of the hill one night when there would be a full moon, to see if the ghost would appear. Greg and I decided we should give them something worth looking at.

We sent one of our lot along with the group to make sure they went exactly the way we wanted them to, up this narrow track and towards the top of the hill. I grabbed one of Mum’s old dresses, took one of my little sister Nat’s dolls and wrapped it in an old shawl, draped another shawl around my head and went and stood on top of the hill.

At the precise moment the kids headed up the hill with their torches in the moonlight, I appeared at the crest, dressed as a colonial woman with a baby in my arms. Just before their torches pointed in my direction, I blew a handful of talcum powder in the air and stood there, shrouded in a ghostly white cloud. Needless to say, it worked a treat. The kids screamed loud enough to raise the dead; one teenage boy who was the big lad of the group pushed past the younger kids and shoved our friend into a fence as he ran past her in his haste to get away.

The next day, a suspicious parent asked me if I was responsible. She then asked if I could sit with her kids and explain that it was us that had put on this amazing illusion and show them how we did it, so that her children could perhaps sleep again some time in the next millennium.

Being a young lad in the western suburbs was for me all about swimming in rivers, canoeing up creeks and just running amok with mates. My mates and I would play along the Maribyrnong River, throwing stones and generally carrying on — just like my dad, my brother and generations of boys in Australia who’ve lived near a river have done.

One particular day, some friends of mine and I were doing all of the abovementioned when a Volkswagen Beetle came screaming along a dirt track at the edge of the river. It was a couple of guys doing their very best to impersonate rally drivers, though without the skill usually associated with that activity. They also lacked a proper rally car, but as many people know, a Beetle makes a great cheap bush-bashing buggy.

What the drivers lacked in aptitude the car made up for in special effects. The other significant thing about the old Volkswagen Beetles was that the engines were prone to catching fire. Because the engine in a VW is at the rear, and bush-bashers rarely take the time to look in their rear-view mirror, these guys were blissfully unaware of the flames that were issuing from the back of their Beetle.

My mates and I could see the fire clearly and tried everything to warn the would-be rally champions of the inferno that was now their unwanted passenger. But to them we must have looked like excited kids waving at a pair of daredevil stunt drivers. We eventually got their attention by standing on the track in front of them — a stunt in itself — and when they screeched to a halt, we shouted out, ‘Look behind you!’ As soon as they saw the flames, these two guys jumped out of the car as if their feet were on fire.

After watching the blaze for a few minutes, we decided to try and extinguish it by throwing dirt from the track onto the motor, which was exposed as the buggy had no engine cover.

The flames continued to rise, most likely because every handful of dirt we threw onto the flaming engine had at least half a handful of combustible leaves and sticks. We seemed to be feeding the fire exactly what it needed to grow stronger. So we came up with the idea of pushing the car into the river.

Can you believe it? Not only was this rally car highly combustible, it also floated! Finally though, once we’d all jumped around on it for a while, it sank low enough in the river to extinguish the flames. Apart from putting out the fire, we’d also created the first decent fishing point in that part of the river. I was so proud of the little pier we’d built from a burning car and the lives I’d helped to save that I ran home to tell my parents.

All Mum and Dave could get from my story was that I’d polluted the river with a car and created an eyesore that would be impossible for the council to get out of the water, not to mention that I’d most likely assisted two strangers in the disposal of a stolen car.

They grounded me for a week. A week sounds like a long time, but that car remained a good fishing spot a lot longer than I stayed in my bedroom.

I was the kind of kid who loved to ride my skateboard or bike, skip stones across the river and let off fireworks. My mother always told me, ‘I don’t mind you riding your skateboard or bike and skipping stones, but stop letting off fireworks.’

I was never a pyromaniac, strictly speaking, but put me together with a cigarette lighter and trouble was bound to happen. I could only have been nine years old or so when I burnt part of my schoolmate’s room down.

One day when his parents hadn’t yet returned home from work, Scott and I were in his room chatting about nothing and everything. Scott had a hidden drawer where he kept his boy stuff — pocketknives, matches, lighters and the like, and I was showing him my trick of getting a flame to jump from one lighter to another. Scott had recently purchased a large fluffy woollen owl as a present for his grandmother, which he had hanging on a hook on his wall. I said as a joke while performing my amazing flame show, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if I did this?’ and quickly flicked one of the lighters near the owl’s bum. I was just about to say, ‘And imagine if the owl caught on fire,’ but before I even started that sentence, the owl went up in flames as if it had been soaked in petrol for a year.

We ripped it off the wall and even more immediately threw it to the ground, where it even more immediately set fire to his woollen floor rug. I decided to kick the inferno owl away from the rug — straight onto Scott’s fluffy woollen bedspread, which was just as keen to burn as the rug and the owl. In one last attempt to halt the blaze I threw the owl across the room, as Scott ran out the door screaming words like God, parents, trouble and something about dying. His curtain was also keen to join the party, so it began to catch fire. Scott re-entered the room with a fire extinguisher and commenced spraying everything in the room that was either on fire or moving, including me. At last it was over. We looked at each other in silence, realising that the house was filled with the smell of smoke and burnt grandma owl. Then all of a sudden — whoosh, the owl went up in flames again. It was so densely packed with fluffy woolly bits that it was still burning on the inside.

At that point I decided to run through the house with the owl to get it outside. The faster I ran, the bigger the flames grew and the harder it was to hold, but I got the owl outside and set the garden hose on to it. Once it was soaked with water, it finally stopped glowing red. We threw the owl into the incinerator where it could do no more harm, then went back into the house and turned on every fan we could find, which probably just pushed the burning smell right through the whole house.

It was not until many years later that the truth about the fire in Scott’s room was revealed. Back then, the secret was safe between Scott, me and a charred woollen owl.

CHAPTER THREE

ON THE ROLLERCOASTER

I gave my first proper performance on a real stage at eight. Actually, I think it was a quarter past eight, because I was a bit late getting on stage. This time I was fully clothed, no farting and no sandcastles and no screaming girls — not yet, anyway. Actually not ever.

I was a cowboy alongside the dancers in one of Mum’s calisthenics concerts.

This was my first gig in front of an audience that wasn’t my family and who didn’t just happen to be passing by waiting for penguins to appear; a proper show with lighting, costumes, props, the works. Back in those days I was often behind the scenes for Mum’s concerts, helping out backstage, doing the lights and opening the curtains. I felt so important being a part of that, not having any idea that I would go on to do both acting and lighting professionally.

There is no dialogue in calisthenics for the most part, so mine was an unspoken moment. To this day I’m not quite sure whether Mum wrote this piece into the performance because she knew how much I wanted to be on stage, or whether there really was some connection between my character and the calisthenics performance. This piece never appeared any other time, but in this particular concert I walked out on stage dressed as a cowboy. I looked around at the girls on stage, and for no apparent reason, pulled out my two guns, shot myself and fell backwards. Not one of those crumpling, gradual sideways falls, this was a flat-on-my-back-in-one-move fall. You can just imagine a chiropractor looking on and shaking their head, saying, ‘I really don’t recommend that.’ But I had to do all my own stunts at that point: I’d fall flat on my back, kick my feet straight up in the air then drop them down. That was my version of a Hollywood Western-style overacted death. And that was it: I was on stage for all of a minute. But it was an impactful minute, a sprint rather than a marathon. The duration was in inverse proportion to the amount of joy that came with it. I certainly got a buzz that lasted all that day and night. After the concert, people were saying, ‘Oh, we saw your bit.’ For a moment, I felt like a star.

I instantly loved being on stage, right from that first time. It’s a bit like getting on a rollercoaster, that first moment it starts to move. You already know whether you’re going to love it or hate it. Some people know very quickly that they’ve made the wrong decision but the second I hit that stage, flat on my back, there was something about it I wanted to experience over and over and over again.

Annie was the first professionally staged musical I ever saw and I was blown away by it. I remember going into this massive space full of seats and thinking, ‘This is kind of like a cinema, but it looks a lot nicer.’ It still wasn’t magical yet. Then it went dark. A man stood up in a hole in front of the stage, which I now know is called a pit, and waved around what I thought was a drumstick. Then the band struck up and I was hearing live music for the first time. I defy anyone to sit in front of a proper orchestra and not be blown away by it. You might not want to sit through an entire evening of orchestral music, but when you first hear a full orchestra led by that person holding a little stick, your ears and mind feel like they are being fed some kind of audio chocolate.

At that point this theatre stopped being just a very big building. All of a sudden the place was transformed into something quite magical — and the curtain hadn’t even gone up yet. Then it rose to reveal the sets, and people came out on stage, and the whole world came to life.

At the end of the show, I felt that I’d been a part of something so special, and I felt pity for all the other people in that theatre who didn’t know this joy I was experiencing. I had no idea everyone else was going through the same thing, because they didn’t look anywhere near as impressed as I was feeling.

Even though I was blown away by it, that staging of Annie didn’t feel like something I could ever do. It was so professional, I couldn’t see myself ever being in something like that. When you watch The Wizard of Oz, even if you’re a kid that wants to perform, you are blown away by it, but you don’t imagine wanting to be in that film; you’re too absorbed in experiencing it to dream of being a part of it.

Then I was taken to see a Gang Show, a theatrical performance put on by the Scout Association. Gang Show is a tradition that goes right back to the 1930s; the story is that every night of the year, a Gang Show is performed somewhere on the planet.

Gang Show is a variety show put on by volunteers, with a cast of as many as 130. As a kid I didn’t realise the blessing of that. Being a part of Gang Show teaches you everything: comedy, acting, dancing, singing, as well as all of the production required to get a show on the road, or on the stage. By the time you walk out on stage for the first time to do your stuff, you’ve actually been through an extremely comprehensive drama course. Now that acting is my life, I get a kick out of turning my hand to performance of every kind: film and theatre, singing and dancing, comedy and drama. Gang Show fed that desire to do it all — maybe it even created it. I don’t know whether I would have been the kind of person I became anyway, and I wouldn’t want to rewind the clock to find out because I would never want to take Gang Show out of the equation of my life.

Sitting in the audience watching my very first Gang Show, I could see kids my age up on stage acting; they were Scouts, Guides, Venturers and Rovers, and I was in Cubs, so that seemed very accessible to me. That was the point when I did look up and think, ‘I could be up there, I could do what they’re doing.’

And that is how I came to walk out on a stage and do a learned routine for the very first time. This was something more than a cowboy kicking his feet; it was something that involved words and lines and direction. First, though, I had to audition.

Mum and David had never really heard me sing. I’d sung around the house, sure, but when you’re singing at home, you’re not really performing, you’re mostly just messing around. Sometimes you put on a voice, just because you’re trying to sound like an adult, but my family had never heard me singing with my own voice, singing my own thing in my own way. Certainly I’d never stood up in front of a room of strangers and sung with a piano accompaniment.

For that first Gang Show audition, I spent quite a few hours learning four songs. You’re given the words and you sing them over and over and over as a group to get the hang of it. Once the whole group has gone through the songs for an hour or so, then it’s your turn. One by one they call your name out and one by one you stand up, pick which song you want to sing out of the four you’ve just learned, whichever best suits you or the one you like best. The pianist gives you a starting note, the melody starts, you sing.

Mum and David stood there watching, quite nervous, both thinking, ‘I wonder how this will go.’ One thing about Mum, though, is she is never in a rush to judge you or hold you back. She’s never doubted me in any pursuit I’ve taken on. She would just smile and say, ‘You want to do that? You give it a go. If you put your heart and soul into it, I think you’ll do fine.’ Dad and his brothers were like that, too. You could tell my uncles, ‘I think I might play cricket for Australia,’ or ‘I’m going to be an actor,’ and while other people might say, ‘Good luck with that’ (meaning ‘I doubt you’ll achieve it’), they would say, ‘Good on you,’ and they would really mean it.

When the pianist played that first note, Mum and David recall that my mouth opened up and this voice flew out, and they looked at each other as if to say, ‘Where the hell did that come from?’ They had no idea until that moment that I could sing like that.

I don’t even know if I knew I could sing like that, I just wanted to be in the show. If you hand a kid a ball and they kick it a long way, they don’t know if it’s a long way until an adult says, ‘Wow, he’s got a big kick on him.’ All I knew was that I was auditioning, and I had to stand up and sing nice and loud. At home, being loud was mainly confined to screaming and carrying on, but for the first time I wasn’t being angry, I wasn’t being silly, I just had to sing with the piano. So I did.

Over the years I’ve sung in rock bands, wedding bands, barber-shop quartets, cabaret acts as well as on stage with true greats like Marina Prior. Last year I recorded a song for a compilation album called The Spirit of Christmas and had a chance to perform solo at Carols by Candlelight, as I had done back in 2007 with the principal cast of Guys and Dolls. Singing is a part of my professional life now, but back then I had never even vaguely considered doing anything like it. I knew I wanted to act, but as a ten-year-old the idea of singing professionally as well never crossed my mind.

At that audition I had to dance a few numbers too, and it turned out I could move okay as well. Coming from a house full of dancers with a mother who was a dance teacher, Mum and David weren’t too surprised that I could come up with a few moves there. Then I had to do a little bit of acting, and I was in.

Over the next months we rehearsed the entire show, which was to be performed at the Palais Theatre in Melbourne. Once again I was going to be in a massive room full of rows of seats, but this time I wasn’t going to be sitting down and waiting to be entertained. It was my job now to entertain.

The Palais holds more than 2000 people, and on our opening night it was packed. I was standing at the side of the stage, as nervous as a duck in Peking, peering between the curtains to catch a glimpse of the audience. I could see the pit full of musicians fronted by a guy called Ken Bailey, the conductor and the director of the show, standing there with a stick in his hand. In a few minutes the curtain would go up. The cast were running around saying ‘Chookas’ and ‘Break a leg’, and I had no idea what either of those meant. I thought it was the oddest thing for someone to tell me to break a leg. It took me a long while to learn that in the theatre you say ‘Break a leg’ to wish someone good luck before a performance, and in Australia ‘Chookas’ means much the same thing.

Our show was about the press, so I was dressed as a newspaper boy in a yellow cap and overalls, a bag over one shoulder and a pretend paper in one hand. As the curtains went up a group of us would walk out and sing a song called ‘Paper, Read All About It’.

This is the real deal now. I’ve got my makeup on and my costume on and there’s a real live audience sitting out there waiting for me. I’ve got to perform eight items, dancing and singing, and in between I’ve got to go backstage to my dressing room and get changed and come back and do another routine as a different character and I’m only ten years old.

What if I trip over? Will I remember the words? What if my voice cracks? There was so much to worry about. But just before I walked out on stage I remember turning to my friends Brad List and Troy Sussman and a bunch of other mates. We all looked at each other. ‘Let’s go and do this thing,’ I said, and we all shook hands and stepped out on stage.

I walked out into the lights until I reached my spot. I looked out at the audience, opened my mouth and somehow the words came out. As nervous as I was just moments before, I didn’t forget where I had to be, my voice didn’t crack — like magic, it all just worked perfectly.

I walked out with my heart going like a jackhammer and I knew instantly this was where I wanted to be forever. I hated to think that when the song finished I would have to walk off the stage. I wanted to stay there and keep going.

Acting in front of a live audience is a little like bungee jumping: you’re nervous, your heart is pounding, your palms are sweating, but you’re still going to take that leap. That’s where the joy comes in, and it wouldn’t be there if anticipation didn’t make your heart flutter. These days I still want to get out there and do it, and do it better than ever before, but I don’t have those nerves.

Throughout the years that followed, I never lost that certainty that somewhere, somehow, I wanted to be on a stage. I didn’t have a plan, I just knew that was where I was heading. If someone is lost in the bush, they truly don’t know where they are going. All they know is that they have an inner drive to survive and they’ll do whatever it takes. There’s no planned path if you want to become an actor. You can do drama courses, but there are no guarantees they will lead to anything. It’s not like training to be a doctor, where you can set up your own practice. I couldn’t go and do a drama course then hang up my shingle outside a studio where people could pay to watch me sing and dance every day between nine and five.

Theatre was always my first love. ‘I’m going to be an actor,’ I’d say to my sister Kim. ‘I’m going to be an actress,’ Kim would reply. ‘Yeah, but mine’s not a pipe dream,’ I would reply. ‘I’m actually going to do it.’ I never said it to be mean or rude to her, and she knows that; I just wanted to make it known to the world at large that this was real and serious for me. I just didn’t know I’d get distracted from it for so long.

Out of all the types of dance I was exposed to as a kid, tap was the one I loved most. Being a calisthenics teacher, Mum was very well connected with the local dance mafia. From the age of ten she sent me to her friend Renee Anne Martini, who taught tap at a church hall about a ten-minute drive from home.

Once a week Mum would take me to that hall, I’d put on my tap shoes and subject myself to Renee Anne. She was a terrifying woman and a hard taskmaster. Round the hall she would chase me with a wooden stick as thick as a chair leg. ‘Faster, faster, yes, yes!’ she used to shout at me. It scared the heck out of me, but I certainly learned my tap dancing. What a teacher: I would describe her as a coconut, with a hard outer shell but all soft and sweet in the middle.

Every morning I’d do five or ten minutes of tap practice before school. Tap is kind of noisy and not friendly to polished floorboards, so I practised outside. Our house was on a sloping block, with the front of the house raised off the ground and a flight of stairs running down to ground level. Each morning I’d put down a piece of chipboard on the balcony out the front and tap dance on it. The local kids walked past on their way to school; I was aware they might see me, but it didn’t worry me enough to stop me, even though tap dancing in the western suburbs was about as common as a nun with facial tattoos.

As my skills developed under Renee Anne’s less than tender hand, I entered a few tap-dancing competitions and did pretty well. That was all quite separate to my school life, until one day the school invited me to dance in a concert they were putting on for the students and for any parents who wanted to come along. It wasn’t a big deal, just a daytime event that was most likely compulsory for students. I said yes, and got to work rehearsing a number for the concert.

Renee Anne had another male student who was a little older than me, and I would get the costumes he had outgrown. He had amazing costumes in vivid colours, made of velvet or adorned with sequins — the type of costumes figure skaters wear, though marginally less tight-fitting. God knows where they are now. And if not God, my mum does. Either way, it’s just as well they’re being kept from me, because I’d dearly love to try one on now just for a giggle, even though I have no doubt I wouldn’t be able to pull one up over my foot, let alone my whole body.

When concert day came round I put on my spangly costume and performed a full tap routine in front of the whole primary school. I was so focused on the performance, it wasn’t until after it was over that it dawned on me that I had just tap danced in a tight-fitting bright-red velvet outfit before the whole school.

Straight after the performance I went to the school toilets to get changed. I was in a cubicle, peeling off my costume and getting back into my everyday clothes, when the school tough guy, a kid called George, came in with three of his cronies in tow. He was like The Fonz with his little entourage. ‘This is where it’s about to go very wrong for me,’ I thought. ‘This is where they beat me up because I was dancing.’ It was truly the first time it had crossed my mind that I had just done something exceedingly dangerous.

These four rough-headed guys were standing around me as I walked out with my costume bundled under my arm. George jerked his head at me and said, ‘That was full on. Where d’you learn to do that?’

‘Been learning to do it for a while,’ I replied.

He stared at me for what felt like the time it would take to build an ark. He gazed into my eyes, nodded his head very slightly, and said, ‘That was really good. That was cool. Good on ya.’ And walked out. His cronies looked slightly confused because I’m pretty sure they thought they were going in there to hit me everywhere bar the roof of my mouth and the soles of my feet. It’s unlikely that they thought they were coming to give me the stamp of approval. I certainly didn’t.

Apart from being relieved that I wasn’t about to be beaten up, that moment stays with me because it was the one that made me think, ‘It doesn’t matter what anyone thinks. I’m going to keep doing this.’ If tap dancing wasn’t going to get me roughed up by the school bully, nothing else was going to stop me. Of all the people to get a compliment from, I never expected it from George, so it meant an enormous amount.

The sad part is, George died in a motorbike accident not long after we finished primary school. He didn’t even get to see his life through high school. I was gutted that I never got to thank him for that moment; I felt like a little piece of me had died. George went to his grave not knowing that he’d given me something positive that meant the world to me. He would never have known the good he did just by nodding and saying, ‘Good on you, keep doing that.’ Underneath it all I felt that he was saying, ‘It doesn’t matter about all this other rubbish. You want to dance? You dance, buddy.’

CHAPTER FOUR

STREET GANGS AND GANG SHOWS

My school report always said ‘easily distracted’. Why did the teachers write that? Because it was true. At school, the one thing I focused on was being distracted, and there was only one threat that ever had the power to pull me into line. At the end of one particularly distracted year, Mum and David said to me that if I didn’t do everything I could to make sure the words ‘easily distracted’ didn’t appear in my report, I wouldn’t be allowed to do Gang Show. That was enough to make me change my ways because Gang Show meant the world to me. To take it away would be like losing a limb or a close friend.

Other than my parents, I don’t think I would be where I am today if it wasn’t for two things: Scouting and Gang Show. Scouting gave me confidence but Gang Show took it to a whole new level because it taught me all my stagecraft. Along with Scouts, it was also where so many of my most enduring friendships were forged. Birds of a feather flock together and the colours of my feathers definitely matched everyone at Gang Show. That was my acting tribe. In the western suburbs of Melbourne I was a bit more colourful than some and I definitely had more to say than most, but at Gang Show we were all like that.

Back when I was involved, it was the largest budgeted amateur theatre show in the southern hemisphere. But all of the money earned from the front of house went back into buying wood and glue and hammers and nails so we could make the props, and the only way for something like Gang Show to survive was for everyone to volunteer to do a bit of everything.

The beauty of it in my eyes was cross-pollination between the technical requirements and the acting. I found it all equally fascinating. The burning inside me was to act, but a part of me got huge joy out of the mechanics of it all, making the props and being part of all the other behind-the-scenes work. It didn’t satisfy the hunger I had to act, but it was enough to keep me from starving entirely.

Apart from Gang Show, I can’t think of anything else that would have satisfied that hole in me that needed to be filled with performance. I enjoyed sports, and I got a buzz out of being part of a team, but the only way that something like football could have really satisfied me was if at quarter time, half time and three-quarter time I could have gone out and done a spot of comedy and then sung to the audience. Thanks to the variety format of Gang Show I didn’t need to use footy for that.

Because my first performances with the Gang Show were at the Palais Theatre, it will forever be my favourite venue on Planet Earth and its surrounding planets. There are other venues that can impress me more: Hollywood Bowl is amazing, there’s something special going on in the Sydney Opera House, and when you stand in the Colosseum where the floor was once covered in sand soaked with the blood of gladiators, there is no feeling like it. But when I walk into the Palais Theatre, the child in me is released. If I had to make a movie of that moment, the camera would pull wide and you would see a shot of me as I am now standing beside me as a ten-year-old, the two of us looking at each other going, ‘Wow, we’re back here.’

Many years after those first Gang Show performances I went on to be the house technician at the Palais, looking after lighting and sound and the fly system. I worked alongside a wonderful old theatre tech called Peter Turley, who like all good old techs had spent a lifetime backstage in the theatres of the world, with bright colourful stories to tell of the shows he had done and the amazing people he had met. To me the theatre technicians’ stories were sometimes greater than the shows they worked on.

Each year all the strands of my life seemed to pull together in a long and lovely cycle involving Gang Show. Early in the year you would audition, and then if you got in — which I did every year, thank goodness — you would rehearse a new show for months and months. Around August or September we would put on the show at the Palais Theatre and fill that theatre for a week. Towards the end of the year, we would have a Gang Show Reunion, which was like the best school camp imaginable. I couldn’t wait to go on it: you’d meet up with all the friends you had made in the show and do plays and have fun and party all weekend.

Christmas would come and go, then in the New Year we would adapt the show we’d done the year before and take it to country towns. A month or two beforehand a few of us on the production team would head to a town to do rehearsals. As well as performing, I used to be a production assistant, so I would take little groups of kids and teach them how to sing — not professional singing instruction, but how to project and how to put their heart into a song — and do simple dance routines. We would take over the local hall with a pianist — either one from the town or one we brought along — and we’d sit down with the local Scouts and teach them the songs.

A couple of months later we would come back to town in a bus with the rest of the cast and the crew and a few members of the orchestra, with a truck full of costumes, props, lighting and sound equipment. We would all arrive on a Friday night and be billeted out with families from the local area. That was a fantastic experience: for years I got to spend a few days living with families all over Victoria. Some of them were dairy farmers, some owned shops or worked at the local hardware store in town; one guy had an army duck, another family ran orchards; there were school teachers, truck drivers, bakers and butchers — we were billeted with all kinds of people. They didn’t all have children in the show but they wanted to help out these city Scouts who were coming to put on a show in their town. I remember going to stay with one family in particular. When I walked into their living room I saw a big lump under the carpet. ‘That’s a bit odd,’ I thought to myself. As I walked further through the room I saw another lump, and another. Curiosity got the better of me. ‘What are those lumps under the carpet?’ I asked. The father said casually, ‘Oh, when we had the carpet laid the kids were playing marbles and they didn’t pick ’em up quick enough.’

I spent my eighteenth birthday on the road in country Victoria, on tour with Gang Show in the township of Leongatha. I couldn’t think of any better way to celebrate.

The great thing about Gang Show on tour was that we didn’t just swing into town and put on a show for the locals: the town was part of the show. We played the leads but the local kids were part of the chorus and played small parts in the show. All day Saturday we would rehearse; the lighting crew would get the lights in and the sound crew would set up the sound and the orchestra would play along while we ran through each item. Bit by bit we would work through the routines: ‘All right, the people on this item come over here, the people on that item head over there.’ By evening everyone knew their parts; we put our costumes on, opened the hall doors and let the crowds in. Of course you’d fill the town hall because all the locals would come along to see this show their kids were involved in, acting alongside the Gang Show cast from Melbourne.

Audience and cast alike, everyone would have a ball. The curtain would close to thunderous applause, then the local Scouts would put on biscuits and scones and cups of tea. Anyone over eighteen would help load all the equipment and costumes back into the truck and then gather for a few beers. In the morning we would get together for a big barbecue to celebrate, then mid-afternoon we would pile back on the buses and head back to the city.

Even though I now make my living as a professional actor, I got just as much fun and satisfaction from acting when I was an amateur on stage with Gang Show. In fact, it’s possible I had more fun back then; there was a freedom to it, and having 130 friends around you when you’re performing is pretty special.

But I think the reason Gang Show appealed to me so much was that the shows were so exuberant; everyone loved being there. Nothing would stop me being a part of that, not even broken bones. One week at the Palais I did a dance routine with a broken arm. A bloke strapped it up every night in skin-coloured bandages and I would go out with top hat and cane.

One double act I did with my mate Damien Lippiatt was in the spirit of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Damien would open the act in straight-faced fashion, only to be interrupted by a ‘drunk’ in the audience. That was me. Damien remembers me being pretty forthright about it: ‘Shane would actually start climbing over people’s heads … which was a bit confronting. You don’t expect to have a 70-kilogram bloke coming at you in the stalls.’ Yes, as strange as it might seem, I once weighed only 70 kilograms.

That little bit of craziness I think is what defines me as a performer. Clay always encourages me to unleash the bit of madness that’s in me. He has always wanted me to show the audience not just the three primary colours on my palette, but with every brush stroke to give them every colour; put all the paint on the canvas.

Not so long ago we celebrated the 60th anniversary of Melbourne Gang Show. It was a time to get together with some friends I see a fair bit of still and others I hadn’t seen for a while. It was a special occasion to mark the journey we’d had, but it also marked the end of a journey for a mate of ours, Glenn Burnell, who had a heart attack and took his final breath in front of his oldest friends at the function that evening. Many of us felt that his heart enjoyed the event so much it figured, ‘It can’t get better than this,’ and took Glenn on to wherever we all go after this life. I’d like to think of it as The Big Gang Show in the Sky: with such fun and friendships, there could be nothing better.

In Melbourne, as in Sydney and Brisbane, the western suburbs have a particular reputation for being a bit rougher, more dangerous. I expect the reality is simply that as you get further from the coast, property gets cheaper and people are poorer. I don’t think it’s quite as bad now, but there was once a lot of violence in the western suburbs of Melbourne around unions, especially the Painters and Dockers, with their links to gangland killings. But I think the nature of violence, crime and particularly drug culture changed. Marijuana was the drug of choice in the 1960s and 1970s — there was very little else on the streets — then the dance party scene grew.

When I was a teenager growing up in Avondale Heights, though, fighting was the way people worked everything out. We all knew the gang names: the mere mention of the Broady Boys would certainly get your attention. A minor insult could spark a battle in the streets, with dozens of people turning up armed with knives and knuckle dusters.

Some of my friends knew I’d been boxing for a little bit; Dad was and still is a boxing coach, so he had trained me up. ‘If you’re going to learn to tap dance and get your ear pierced like a girl, then you’re going to have to learn how to fight,’ was his logic. Dad was a bit of a man’s man that way, a boxer and an all-round athlete, though he has a much softer side: my mates used to give me a ribbing when I kissed my dad, though I came to see it as something to be very proud of.

One afternoon after school there was a knock at our front door. One of my mates, Marky Mark, was there asking if I was home. He came into my room and said, ‘We need to borrow your fists.’

The younger brother of one of our friends had been riding his bike down the street. Some guys from a gang saw him cruise past and one of them stuck his arm out in front of the kid and knocked him off his bike. It’s called coat hangering, like a high tackle in Aussie Rules football or Rugby League. ‘Tell your brother that’s from us,’ the gang boy told the little kid, knowing that was going to light a fuse that would eventually lead to an explosion.

I couldn’t really say no. So I put on a thick jumper in the hope that it made me look a bit bigger, and went outside with my mate. We were around sixteen then, too young to drive, but waiting in a car outside was an eighteen-year-old boy that I hardly knew, ready to drive us to the designated meeting point for the fight. We got in the back of the car with a couple of mates, and as we’re driving along I asked, ‘So, who are we fighting?’ They told me the name of the gang and I said, ‘Well, this isn’t going to go well for us — there’s a heap of them, we’re probably going to die.’ But my mate Adrian sitting next to me said, ‘Nah, we’ll be all right,’ and he pulled out what can only be described as a machete.

It was one of those moments like you see in the movies, where they do a fast zoom and you feel you’re being sucked along a corridor. ‘I’ve got here so fast,’ I was thinking. I really believed this might be the point at which I would die and it would all be over for me.

I didn’t say much for the rest of the trip. It was dark when we arrived at the meeting place and got out of the car. For about half an hour we stood around waiting, psyching ourselves up. But nobody else showed. We all got back in the car and went home.

All I could think was how hideously wrong that could have gone, and I would have been that person saying, ‘I had nothing to do with this, I don’t even know why I’m here.’ But it had everything to do with me because I was there. I got in the car, I didn’t try to stop this thing happening. It would be perfectly reasonable for my parents or the police to ask me why I had let that happen; all I can say is that it happened so fast.

Another time, a friend of mine was beaten up on the street. Similar story: some guys did it to attract someone else’s attention and they got it. ‘You need to get down there, we’ve got to borrow your fists,’ I was told. There I was wishing I could say, ‘I’m not coming, I’m going swimming,’ or ‘I’ve got to do my homework,’ or ‘I’m just working on a cure for cancer and I think I’m almost there, can I come a little later?’ but once again it felt like ‘No’ was not an option.

So that’s how I ended up standing at the bottom of a quarry with fifteen boys. This world of fights and gangs was part of our world; my parents would never have known; in fact they’ll probably hear about it for the first time in this book. It wasn’t the sort of thing you told your mum and dad. All the same, because Dad was a boxing coach he was versed in the art of fighting, even if he never intended me to take that art into an abandoned quarry. Standing there waiting for the fight to start, all I could think of was Dad telling me that if you bring a gun to a fight, you’ll get shot. Bring a knife, you’ll get stabbed. Why take a weapon to a fight when the other guy can take it off you and shoot or stab you with it? Always turn up to a fight equipped with just your hands so you can throw a punch and block a punch. But if Dad or Mum and Dave had known I was there in that quarry, I think it might have been their hands I would have had to block.

We saw cars start to arrive. We were still only sixteen or seventeen at this stage, so I was thinking, ‘Great, so we’re up against eighteen-year-olds.’ When you’re sixteen and you’re facing up to blokes a year or two older than you, that’s a big difference.

A couple of the cars pulled up near the edge of the quarry. Some guys got out and stood looking down at us for a moment. They must have decided we weren’t worth the trouble because they turned around, got back in their cars and drove off.

So that was two times lucky. It wasn’t always like that, though, and the fights didn’t always happen in disused quarries. Sometimes they took place in the comfort and security of the school grounds. One time, two kids from another school were picked out to fight two kids from our school. They turned up at the designated time and they were marched onto the tennis court, which was surrounded by high wire fencing. In a scene reminiscent of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, the four boys walked in, the gate was closed, a chain was put around it, and a padlock was put in place. The key was given to a kid who ran off with it so no one could unlock the gate, then the four boys stayed in there and fought until it was over. Even the teachers couldn’t get in.

Four men enter, two men leave, just like Thunderdome. It was truly barbaric. From time to time I have had to defend myself and step up to the plate, as Dad would say, and though I hope to God that my kids don’t ever have to be part of a world like that, I have to admit that I did learn street smarts that are with me forever.

I’ve never been ashamed of being from the western suburbs of Melbourne; on the contrary, it’s a badge of honour that I wear with pride. I celebrated my 21st birthday with a hall full of friends and family, around 180 people in all. In one corner were my show friends, all of my buddies that I dance and sing and perform with, some of them gay. In another corner was a bunch of huge guys with Mohawks and rings through their noses, right next to some friends with shaved heads and tattoos. My cousins and aunties were there sipping tea, and my uncles swilling beer. Dad commented later that he was watching me move between all of the groups and everyone was talking and connecting in a way you wouldn’t normally expect outside the four walls of that building. But in my mind they were all the same type of people: all of them had the qualities that I appreciate and admire — they were loyal, honest, generous, friendly and full of heart.

There have been times when my different worlds have collided, though — or overlapped, at least. One day I was rehearsing for a dance performance with a bunch of girls and guys in a hall on the outskirts of Melbourne. This was the eighties, so the girls were in their leotards and leggings looking like extras from a video for Olivia Newton-John’s ‘Let’s Get Physical’. We boys would have been wearing shorts to make Warwick Capper blush, or multicoloured baggy pants that make me blush now just thinking about them. Two rough-looking guys wandered in off the street; they had a bunch of tattoos (back then that was a sign of toughness, more than it is today), Winnie Reds cigarette packets tucked into the sleeves of their T-shirts (another sign) and only about five teeth between them (not a sign of toughness, just of bad oral hygiene). They parked themselves in some chairs up the back of the hall, checking out the rehearsal. These guys had beers in hand and a carton of VB beside them. I reckon they’d had a few before they came in, too: they appeared to be a bit tickled by the amber fluid.

Some of the girls felt a little threatened having these guys sitting there watching us dance, so I stopped dancing for a moment, went over and said, ‘Hey boys, how ya goin’?’

‘Yeah, not bad,’ they replied.

‘So what’s goin’ on?’ I asked them.

‘Yeah, just checkin’ this out — what’s it all about?’

‘We’re just doin’ some dancin’, rehearsin’ for a show.’

‘That’s pretty cool.’

‘Yeah, it’s grouse fun.’

‘Yeah, good on ya. We’re just gunna sit and watch.’

‘If it’s all the same to you, boys, could you do me a bit of a favour? You’re freakin’ the girls out, puttin’ them off a bit.’

They both looked at me and said, ‘Oh — sorry, man, that wasn’t our plan. We were just gunna have a few drinks and sit and watch.’

‘Yeah, is it alright if I just ask you boys maybe not to hang around, because they’re kinda a bit scared of you guys.’

‘Yeah, mate, no probs, have a good one,’ they said, and they got up and left.

As I walked back to the group on stage, I could feel a couple of my friends staring at me as if to say, ‘So what are you? Are you them or are you us?’ I don’t believe I was being judged by them, but I could feel the speculation.

‘What did you say to make them go?’ one of the girls asked.

‘I just went and told them they were freaking you out,’ I said.

‘How were they with that?’

‘They were fine with that.’

She looked at me quizzically and said, ‘You seemed a little different when you were talking to them. You spoke differently.’

‘Well, yeah, if I’d said, “Excuse me, gentlemen,” that wouldn’t have worked.’

That night when I went home I remembered how my dance friends had looked at me as I walked back to them and I asked myself, when am I the fraud and when am I me? But it seemed to me then as it does now that we all alter with the scenery. You wear a suit to a wedding and you wear shorts to the beach; you walk around in your own house in floppy old trackies, but you step out the front door in better ones. Some people do less of that shifting, some do more. Because of the different worlds I mix in I think I’m on the ‘more’ side of the spectrum.

Sometimes when I moved from one world to another, I would do a costume change. I’d travel all over Melbourne to parties or functions with my friends from Gang Show or the caravan park, but in particular I remember crossing town to go to cast parties with my mates. Catching the train from Avondale to the other side of Melbourne, I’d take a backpack with my nice-looking party clothes in it. I’d wear ripped jeans, a pair of old runners, and an East Coast jumper — lots of Footscray (AFL Western Bulldogs) fans would wear them, I think because they were red, white and blue, and I am a Doggies fan. Back then I had longer hair; people now would call it a mullet, but I would argue vehemently that people have forgotten what a mullet really is. I’ve been a strong supporter and protector of the mullet and I object to the way the word has been redefined. A mullet was short on top and long at the back. In fact, I had a Camaro, a particular version of the mullet in which the styling and blow waving is as crucial as the cut itself. It was the kind of haircut favoured by American muscle car drivers. Pat Cash, Jason Donovan and John Farnham were all so impressed with my head of hair they got the same do. Wearing my scruffy travel clothes, I knew I wouldn’t attract trouble on the trains. If you stood out, groups of teenage boys roaming the carriages would ask you a random question: what the time was, which footy team you supported, anything to check out your demeanour. If you seemed weak or nervous they would latch on to you. It was the law of the jungle, predators singling out the feeblest members of the herd.

Once I reached my station, I’d hop off the train, nip around a corner or behind a tree and change into the nicer pair of pants and a better shirt, then head off to the party, knowing that I would blend into this new environment.

Does that make me a fake or a bad person? I don’t think it’s a matter of falseness or good or bad, right or wrong. It’s just making the most of a very handy capacity to blend in and not draw attention to yourself. Though that is perhaps a little strange coming from a man who works in an industry that is all about being noticed.

I don’t change my street wardrobe behind trees any more, and I am comfortable in my skin and fabric just about everywhere I go. I will admit that having a recognisable head that isn’t known for fashion lets me off the hook a fair bit: I can walk around in shorts and thongs, which is my preferred attire, and I am pretty sure people are not saying, ‘I was expecting a little more from the dunny bloke.’ But that doesn’t mean I will swear in front of old ladies or eat chicken with my fingers in a classy restaurant. Some adjustment to suit the environment will always be required, but I’m pretty sure that’s just called manners.

CHAPTER FIVE

CAKE AND SOUP

One place I never minded being was school. Five days out of seven for most weeks of the year, you were sent to a place filled with people your age. It doesn’t get better than that in my book — and now literally in my book! For the most part my teachers were wonderful, with one exception that I will never forget. I’ll call her Mrs France, even though that was not her name and even though I haven’t forgotten what her name was. Mrs France was a battle-hardened teacher who took no nonsense, but she was a very poor detective. One day I happened to walk into the big double-sized classroom, where a massive cake had been set up for a special occasion. I stood there gazing at the cake, surprised to see it there. It looked magnificent, except a large chunk had been hacked out of one side. A moment later Mrs France walked in the other side of the classroom, saw me, saw the cake, put two and two together and came up with an answer: Shane Jacobson.

‘Mr Jacobson! How dare you eat that cake! It’s there for everyone’s enjoyment … what gives you the audacity to steal school property?’ she barked at me.

‘But I didn’t, I didn’t even know —’

‘No, not another word.’ She made me sit and wait until everyone had arrived for the ceremony. I wish I could remember what it was for, but the cake has erased every other memory of that day. Mrs France then stood me up in front of all the students and staff and denounced me as a thief who had ruined this fabulous ceremonial cake.

Every time I saw that woman I thought about the injustice of it. Injustice is the one thing the Jacobsons don’t tolerate: no matter who is accusing you, whether it’s a teacher, or the police, or the prime minister, if you’ve done something wrong, you have to cop it sweet; if not, you don’t stand there and take the blame.

I got to see the cake incident from the other side many years later. I was the lighting director for an amateur theatre show when I sacked a guy from the lighting crew in front of the entire cast. He had fallen asleep during a show while operating the lighting desk — at least, that was the story I had from the rest of the cast and crew. ‘He’ll be gone tomorrow,’ I told a room full of a hundred people. Afterwards a wise friend of mine, Graham Crawford, asked me, ‘Did you ask him the full story? You’ve told him he was in the wrong and that you are going to replace him, but did you ask him for his version?’ I hadn’t done that, so I went and asked him what had happened. He had an explanation that made him not completely innocent, but nowhere near as guilty as I’d been told.

By now, though, I’d told a hundred people that this guy would be gone. I explained what had happened to my mate, who said, ‘It’s up to you, but make sure you’re doing the right thing.’

This is my cake moment, I told myself. So the next day I told all the cast and crew, ‘I know I told you all that this guy would be gone today, but he’s not — he’s back and he’s staying.’ If there was going to be egg on my face for making the wrong call, then that was just bad luck. I had to do what I believed was fair.

The cake incident was a rare blip on the screen, though, and I thrived at school for the most part. In high school I was head of the Student Representative Council and I was once named Citizen of the Year. My name appears on the honours boards at Niddrie Technical School, which I don’t mind admitting I’m a bit chuffed about. I love honours boards. Whenever I go into a clubhouse or a committee room I can’t help but look up at those boards. They feel so old, so established; to my mind, they belong to the heroes of World War I and World War II, any war for that matter, the people who founded universities or rewrote the course of history. It’s great to look at the first name on the board and speculate about where that person is now. That big board would have looked really bare for the first year when his was the only name on it. And wouldn’t you know it, mine is the first name on two of the honours boards hanging in the library at my old school? Shane Jacobson, first up on that big bare board. It’s wonderful and hilarious at the same time. In case you are wondering, I wasn’t up there because I was dux of the school, it was because I was the SRC rep for that year.

For old time’s sake, partway through writing this book I decided to go back and take a look at that honours board. I drove over to Niddrie Tech, which is now Rosehill Secondary College, and spoke to Mr Crocker, the teacher who was head of the SRC back then and still at the school all these years later.

He explained that the boards had been taken down when the library was renovated and they had not been put back up. ‘It’s a secondary school now,’ he explained, ‘and maybe they’re not so proud of their technical school roots.’

As I left, Mr Crocker — or John, as I can call him now that I’m an adult too — said, ‘I’d like to think I have a chance of getting those boards put back up.’

I hope that does happen because I am proud of the school and its history, and I’d love to take my kids back in a few years and show them those boards. Even if they stay in the cupboard, though, knowing that my name is one there is enough for me.

I may have been the head of the SRC, but I may also have been a mild nuisance at times in the pursuit of laughter. I wasn’t a badly behaved student, but I was definitely willing to do anything for a laugh. In order to be effective and engage my audience, at times that meant distracting an entire class. Every now and then an astute teacher could sense I was going to be a problem. My engineering teacher was particularly good at that, and he would throw me out of his class before I’d even entered it.

Mr Calabro had a very precise way of speaking, and he would say to me, ‘Mr Jacobson, you can stay outside.’

‘But I haven’t done anything yet,’ I would protest.

‘No, I know you haven’t, but I can tell by the look in your eyes you’re going to. Aren’t you?’

‘Absolutely,’ I would reply.

Mr Calabro was always spot on. On many occasions I would sit outside his classroom, refused entry, all because of a look in my eye. He was a very good judge of character, far better than Mrs France. He would have been able to tell just by looking at me that I hadn’t stolen that cake; equally, had I intended to do so, he would have known that too.

I loved to make the class laugh, but I loved organising things almost as much. My beautiful partner, Felicity, or Fliss as I call her, says to me, ‘Boy, you love a committee.’ I’m always seconds away from forming a committee. I’ve shaken the impulse off a bit lately: once you have kids you haven’t got as much time for obsessions, but at school I was on so many committees. Apart from the SRC, I was a patrol leader in Scouts, a unit leader in Venturers and on the production team of Gang Show — any time a group was needed to organise things, I’d be in there. In a room full of twenty people, if someone said, ‘We need a group to make this happen,’ my name would always crop up.

Any time I didn’t like the way something was being run, I’d set about finding a strategy to change it. During winter we were pretty much locked out of the school buildings at lunchtime; rain, hail or hurricane, we had to go out in the playground and amuse ourselves. Kids these days have more options for activities during lunch hour, but for us, fruit fights were the big thing. The older kids lined up one side of the assembly area and the younger ones stood on the other side and we’d throw fruit at one another. One time I had just thrown an apple at an older kid on the other side of the school ground but missed my target. Yet I would like to say it was a pretty good shot. It hit the wall behind him and the kid got splattered with ricocheting pieces of Granny Smith. As I turned around for more ammunition, I came face to face with a teacher. ‘There are children in Africa who would give anything for that apple.’

‘I know, where do you think I was trying to throw it, sir?’

‘You just scored yourself a week’s yard duty, Mr Jacobson.’ Yard duty involved walking around the yard with a teacher, picking up rubbish.

‘Thank you sir, I look forward to it.’

That fruit was probably the healthiest item in our school diet. I was lucky enough to have Mum prepare a lunch for me every day, but every now and then I would use my spending money to purchase some food from the tuckshop, as we called it. The canteen specialised in junk food, which was fine by me most times, but every now and then in winter all I wanted was hot beef rolls and tomato soup. I love soup almost as much as I love committees. I asked the school if they could change the menu and they said no. So I started putting a campaign together to change their minds. I passed around a petition for people to sign calling for tomato soup and hot beef rolls. The school had one of those old Gestetner machines, a duplicating device that you had to crank by hand, like you were trying to start an Oldsmobile. I’d sit there and crank that handle, churning out my petitions. The machine used purple ink which gave off a pungent smell, and I loved the smell of that ink. I don’t know which I enjoyed more: taking the higher moral ground or getting high on that purple ink. It was certainly a win-win situation for me. I could start a protest and get purple-ink vapour-dazed at the same time. Not only that, the petition worked and we got our soup and hot beef rolls.

The pinnacle of my committee activity, though, was when I got the thought in my head: why don’t we have a school dance? You know, where you get to dance with girls? After all, what’s not to like about that?

Off I went to the vice principal’s office to talk through the possibilities. There I was, chatting away about my scheme, when he interrupted me.

‘Shane, while I’m happy that you feel comfortable being here, get your feet off my desk.’

I shifted my feet back to the floor and returned to my point. ‘So why can’t we have a school dance?’

‘Because we’ve never had one before. And because there’s no money for it,’ the vice principal told me.

I ignored point number one, which had no significance in my eyes. ‘So it’s just about the money?’

‘If you can find a way to do it without it costing the school anything, we can have a school dance,’ he said.

I decided to raise funds by showing movies in a large area under the library, not surprisingly known as the sub-library. It was a massive room the same size as the library, just a big basement space with walls around it where the school ran sports activities when it rained. Videos were cutting-edge technology back then, and Terminator was the big film that year. I planned to raise money for the dance by charging students a small fee to watch a movie, but first I had to figure out how to run a video in this empty space. There was a large telly in the AV department, we just needed a bracket to put on the wall to hold it. We priced up a bracket and other bits and pieces required, and it came to $1300. That was a lot of money; ours was a government technical school, so money was about as sparse as sushi in the Sahara. They weren’t going to spend that much — especially since the whole point of the exercise was to avoid spending school funds.

Being a technical school, though, we had the ability to make stuff. There were classes in automotive engineering, electrical, woodwork, sheet metal work and carpentry; there were engineering workshops with lathes and power tools and all sorts of other equipment. I went to one of the metalwork teachers and asked if we could weld up a bracket that was strong enough to hold a television. ‘Yeah, we can do that,’ he said, so that’s what we did.

Then I realised there was a VHS player in the library, right above the area we wanted to screen the film in. So I tracked down the school nerd — perhaps better described as ‘the person who will be a genius and make a fortune later in life, and who will drive past you in their Aston Martin, wearing an Armani suit and laughing inwardly at the rest of us clowns’. Anyway, I asked our school nerd if he could figure out a way to connect the library VHS to the sub-library screen.

‘Sure, you can use a plug-in remote on the machine upstairs and run the signal back through the floor.’

In the end we got it all done for next to nothing. All the school had to do was drill a hole through the concrete floor and we could make it happen. Joseph, the future Aston owner, wired it up and next thing you know we were all set up to run videos.

Like most films, Terminator runs longer than our one-hour lunch break, so we screened it over two lunchtimes. A couple of the bigger kids stood with me at the door collecting twenty cents from each student while I tore tickets from a raffle book. About a third of the school came and watched the first half, then came back the next day for part two. The kids brought back their tickets, only to be told by the doormen, ‘Yeah, that was for yesterday. You need another ticket for today.’ There may have been some grumbling, but everyone stumped up another twenty cents.

Pretty soon we’d raised enough money for the first school dance in the history of Niddrie Technical School. It is possible that girls might have entered the school grounds before, but it seemed to me that this was a first too: we teamed up with a nearby girls school and they were our guests for the evening. It was just like every film you’ve ever seen about a high school dance: a lot of guys leaning against the wall along one side of the room, a lot of girls standing along the other side — quite reminiscent of our lunchtime fruit fights. Things soon sorted themselves out, though, and we got our dancing shoes on and danced like everyone was watching — and they were.

Unlike many of my schoolmates, I had plenty of female friends: good buddies who just happened to be female. Perhaps I’ve always got on well with women because I was blessed with such a good relationship with my mum and my two sisters. I was also used to girls because of Mum’s calisthenic dancers coming through our house all the time. I was surrounded by girls, travelling on buses with them to calisthenics competitions. On the street where I grew up, most of the other kids just happened to be female. Girls weren’t an anomaly to me.

I think for some boys who don’t have sisters or a lot of girls around their neighbourhood it might be hard to converse with girls. That changes over time; as you start to go out to pubs and clubs you meet more girls, but at Niddrie Tech the options were limited. I would walk up to a girl I knew on the street and have a chat, then afterwards a few of my mates would ask, ‘What did you talk to her about? What did you say?’

‘I just went and said hi.’

‘Then what’d she say?’

‘She said hello back — it’s not rocket science, you know.’

One weekend I was playing with some girls, Lisa and Paula McKinnon, who were neighbours and close buddies of mine. Lisa and Paula were identical twins — at least to most people they were, though I could tell them apart easily. Even though they were equally wonderful, I carried an extra special torch for Lisa, and I kind of hoped the feeling was mutual. We were playing some game down the side of the McKinnons’ house and I said I was thirsty. Paula said, ‘I’ll get you a glass of water if you kiss Lisa.’ That day, I must have drunk about 200 litres of water, realising that every time I asked for water I got to kiss Lisa. I have never drunk that much water; I didn’t have to drink water again for ten years after that.

We were just kids, of course, so our kissing didn’t involve moving or doing anything with our mouths. All we did was connect the lips. We just stood there, nose to nose, with our lips touching. We thought that was a kiss. But I had my face right up against a girl’s face, and you know what? That was good enough for me.

CHAPTER SIX

THE BUS OF OPPORTUNITY

Scouting introduced me to Gang Show, but it also married three of my favourite things: camping, organising and playing with mates. You could say Scouting ran in my blood. Mum was involved in Scouting when she was younger, my Aunty Wendy was a Scout leader, Clayton was a Scout and Kim had a go at Brownies, so it was an obvious thing for me to do. And I did it all: Cubs, Scouts, Venturers and Rovers.

Scouting used to be a much bigger deal than it is now. There weren’t as many other options for kids; there were fewer organised activities and no computer games. The world back then was tennis racquets, cricket bats, footballs, bikes and Scouts. And dancing and boxing, for me at least.

Clayton did Cubs and Scouts for a bit and he had some fun with it, but I don’t think he enjoyed Scouting as much as I did. I loved it: the friendships forged in Scouting have outlasted everything. Without a doubt I have more friends from Scouting than friends from school and even from my old neighbourhood; my Scouting mates outnumber the rest twenty to one. Whether that speaks volumes about Scouting or whether it speaks volumes about the great people I met within that organisation, I don’t know. It’s not something I’ve ever tried to calculate, nor would I want to pull it apart; it’s just great to be a part of it.

I was six when I started Cubs, and I mostly recall it was about learning to tie knots and wear a uniform, and having a hanky, a pencil, a piece of paper and a ten-cent piece in your pocket to make a phone call if there was an emergency.

When I got to Scouting age, we would go on competition weekends and each Scout group would go up against the others in challenges. You’d be placed in teams of six and given two logs and a plank of wood. You were told that a power line had fallen in the river so it was electrified — and when I say ‘river’, it might only be two or three metres across, but too far to jump; you had to get your whole team across without touching the water. Or there might be a rope hung between two trees a couple of metres off the ground and you were told it was an electrified fence: No one could go under it. You had to get over it but you couldn’t touch it.

This was heaven for me. You got to build structures, work with your hands, make campfires and sit around them, or chat with your mates in tents at night; I couldn’t think of any better way to spend a weekend. There was camping, camaraderie and tying knots, but there was also teamwork. I was in paradise because getting any task or event organised involved a committee. On every committee you would have a team leader, and, as my time in Scouting went on, more often than not I’d be one of the team leaders, first as a patrol leader then later as a unit leader in Venturers. Scouting taught me to step forward, put my hand up and say, ‘I think I know how to organise this,’ and that has stayed with me forever. Even now, in terms of getting projects up, it’s not in my nature to sit back. I like to create, both as a performer and in a nuts-and-bolts way as well.

Not every endeavour I was involved in was an unqualified success, though. On one Venturers weekend we had to demonstrate our aptitude with a compass. Each group was given a set of compass bearings and had to compete against the other groups to get to a series of destinations first. You were given your first compass bearing and told to walk in that direction for, say, four kilometres, then at that coordinate you had to look for a big rock where you’d take your next compass bearing, and so on throughout the weekend.

As our group gathered to take our bearings, a sharp wind was whipping up, so I placed the map on a car bonnet and we took the compass bearing there. As anyone who knows anything about compasses will tell you, you’re not supposed to use them near anything metallic because it affects the accuracy of your reading. We hadn’t thought about that. Every other time, throughout my entire Scouting career, right from my days with Cubs, I was aware you had to keep the compass away from your belt buckle, or if you were wearing a watch with a metal band you should put it in the other hand. This one time, we didn’t make the mistake of using the compass near our belt buckles, but we did sit it on a car’s steel bonnet. So the very first reading we took was off, which meant we were heading in the wrong direction before we even started. While the other groups were hitting all the different markers, we just kept walking. We couldn’t find one single marker or identifying feature on the map that we had been told we would come across. By the end of that day some four-wheel drives were sent out to find us because we got ourselves well and truly lost in the bush.

So if you see me in the street and you want to ask me for directions, please make sure I look at a road map or a GPS and I don’t get a compass out.

Some of my mates thought Scouting was a bit nerdy until they came to my Venturer unit and saw that there were two skinheads, which was a big deal at the time, two guys with Mohawks, and that most of the guys had an earring. Our bunch was a little wilder than some. One time we played a game of British Bulldog; two of the guys on the other team ended up with broken collarbones. We did seem to win a lot of competitions, I admit; we applied the old adage of being firm, fair and friendly. I think we were very firm, fairly fair and pretty darn friendly.

Rovers gave me the opportunity to do many adventurous things, including introducing me to rally driving. But part of what I loved most about Rovers was the odd things we used to do to amuse ourselves. One time we wanted to have a formal dinner, but we decided to have it at McDonald’s. We all put on bowties and suits, brought our own silver cutlery and proper glasses, and went to McDonald’s. Instead of eating lobster and caviar we ordered Cheeseburgers and Big Macs.

Each year we’d take the contents of a normal lounge room and set it up at Carols by Candlelight. We wouldn’t be in the paid seating area in the Myer Music Bowl; we’d be in the park over the hill, where a lot of families used to turn up with a picnic. The kids would run around the park while their parents had a glass of wine, some cheese and biscuits, and listened to the concert. You couldn’t see the stage from there, but you could hear the music, and that was good enough. There would be hundreds of people there, sitting on picnic rugs with their children, holding their candles and listening to the carols. Everyone came for the spirit of Christmas, and you could really feel it on that hill.

We would take a large piece of carpet, a television, some couches, a bedside lamp and a little coffee table through the throng and set up what looked like a lounge room out in the park. We’d run an extension lead up through the trees on one side to where we had a generator, sitting well away so the noise wouldn’t drown out the carols. We’d have to park a trailer loaded with our stuff down at the base of the hill and lug it all up, but it was worth the effort. Once it was all set up we sat on the sofas, turned on the TV and had a few beers. People would send their children to sit with us. The only rule was they had to walk in through the door. ‘The door is over there,’ we’d say, pointing to a mark on the carpet showing the space where a door should be. The kids would come in and sit on the carpet, right up close to the television to watch it, while we sat back on the couches drinking beer.

I loved being a part of that: being with people my own age, having a beer and a good time. One or two would choose to stay sober and drive the trailer home, so I also loved being part of a group that was safe and respectful of the people around them. And while we were sitting on a couch getting drunk in public and listening to Christmas carols, we were giving a bit of magic to those kids sitting on the carpet in front of us, watching television in a lounge room in the park.

Some parts of your life you look back on and wish that you had enjoyed more at the time. Scouts wasn’t like that for me: I don’t think it would have been humanly possible to squeeze any more enjoyment out of it than I did.

There was only one jarring moment that sticks with me even now. In Venturers I spent four years working towards my Queen’s Scout award. It’s one of the highest Scouting awards you can achieve. In the UK, the award is presented by the Queen at Windsor Castle. It takes most people three or four years to get all of the component badges, which cover community involvement, first aid, personal growth, adventure challenges — there are a dozen or more. One part of the initiative badge, for instance, might require you to take a group away on a weekend hike: you organise everything, from mapping to food planning, submit the plan of what you are doing and head off into the bush for two days with a group of people your own age.

When you turn eighteen you have to leave Venturers, and I was just shy of eighteen when I went for my last badge for the Queen’s Scout award. It had taken me four years and I’d done everything. My task was to run a camp. At the end of the challenge I had to write a report, and I was failed on that.

One of the high-ranking Scouting leaders for the area told me, ‘Someone else probably could have passed with that report, but I expected more from you.’ Because he failed me on that one component I couldn’t get that final badge, and therefore my Queen’s Scout award.

Mum was so upset for me, because she knew how hard I had worked over those years. Several people asked me, ‘Are you going to argue about this?’ Others in the Scouting organisation told me that if I swapped to another district they could quickly pass me so that I would get the award. I got quite annoyed about that. ‘I don’t want the badge,’ I eventually told one guy who was particularly insistent.

In the end I decided that the one thing they couldn’t take from me was all the knowledge that I’d gained over those years. Yes, the badge is something special: you put that on your uniform and you can show that to the world forever. In any organisation a badge, or an award of any kind, is intended to recognise something you’ve done, but if you don’t get the badge it doesn’t take away from your achievement. I realised that if I had done all of this for the badge, then I had probably missed the point. It’s about the experience, the lessons, the knowledge. I have the badge’s essential values recorded in my brain forever. With or without that tiny patch stitched on the arm of a no-longer-used uniform, its very lessons are in my mind and at my fingertips. And that is where they truly belong.

A mate of mine in Gang Show used to perform a little skit called ‘Getting Over’. It was a comedy piece about an old man trying to get over a fence. This guy carrying a cane and a basket tries to get over the fence, and no matter how many different ways he tries, he always gets caught up and falls back onto the side he was starting from. He would get one leg over and use the cane to push down on the fence, and as he pushed down, his leg would go through the hole underneath him and he’d slip all the way back down again. It’s one of those very simple stunt routines, just a bloke with a cane and a fence; it’s very visual, so my explanation falls far short of the reality — but believe me, if it’s done well it’s very, very funny.

Gang Show would often be asked to perform some of the best bits on TV, and that was one of the skits that was chosen. In the early eighties, shows like Hey Hey It’s Saturday and Shirl’s Neighbourhood would invite Gang Show members along, and I used to think that was a pretty big deal. A spot on Hey Hey It’s Saturday had special power to impress: that show ran for 27 years; it was huge through the seventies and eighties. My big moment came when, along with some other kids, I was asked to go and sing on Shirl’s Neighbourhood, a kids’ TV show that was very popular through the early eighties. We were taken to the Channel Seven studios in Melbourne to do the filming in a studio next to where they filmed Cop Shop. In breaks between filming we could walk around the Cop Shop sets, and I was blown away by that: just imagine, being on the actual set of a fabulous TV show like Cop Shop.

We sang a song called ‘Love’, a silly little song with lyrics like ‘If we look dejected then we’ll tell you what it is, love, love, love’. Back then the mic operator sat up on a big crane and his job was to keep the mic near you as you moved around the set. It’s all done with lapel mics now, but in those days a crane followed you around the studio. It was amazing; it was another world. Being on stage with Gang Show was fantastic at any time, but this was just another level. As we performed our song, I was thinking to myself, ‘I wonder if I’ll ever end up here? How good would it be to end up acting in a television studio one day?’

At times we got to appear alongside some professional talent. One of the first celebrities I ever performed with was Maurie Fields, a truly wonderful actor and comedian who played in classic TV series like The Flying Doctors and Prisoner. I didn’t have a clue who he was, though; I was just a kid, and to me he was just the guy who came on as Santa Claus when we performed on the ABC’s Christmas show. I also didn’t get some of his jokes. Maurie was known for liking a beer, as many men do. In one scene in the show, a kid serves him a soft drink. Maurie, dressed as Santa, takes a sip and says, ‘Argh, I’ve been poisoned!’ I never understood that gag until I was older.

The limelight didn’t call to me strongly all the time, though; sometimes a good feed seemed more appealing. When I was in my teens we recorded a Christmas album for Gang Show with the ABC at a studio in Melbourne. Weeks later when the recordings were finished, everyone was asked to meet in a park for the album cover photo. On this particular day our family had a lot to do; David and Mum were driving around town with us kids in the back seat, running various errands. When it came time to drop me off in the park for the photo, we were also due to visit friends of Mum and David’s for lunch. These people used to put on a really good spread, so when Mum asked me, ‘Do you want to get this photo done or would you rather come to lunch with us?’ I thought, ‘Gee, they put on a good feed,’ and I made the choice that any adolescent boy would make. My face never made it onto the cover of the album, but my voice is there.

Gang Show housed and trained quite a lot of talent, and sometimes kids would be poached for various television shows. A talent scout would come along to a Gang Show performance and approach kids afterwards about auditioning for a TV show. Tim Nelson went on to be in Young Talent Time. Tim was with them for three years, and continued on to work behind the scenes, as a director and producer. Tim was in Gang Show at the same time as me and I was told the scout took my name down too, but he was selected and I wasn’t. That was a moment when I felt the door had been shut in my face.

Another chance came when I was fourteen or so. A talent scout for Crawford Productions took down some names, including mine, for a new show called The Henderson Kids. Wow, I couldn’t believe it. I would have given anything to be in that show, not because I was set on fame and fortune or anything of the sort; it was simply the single most exciting thing I could imagine doing. I kept thinking back to the filming we did for Shirl’s Neighbourhood and the buzz of being on set, and I wanted more of that feeling.

I did my very first television audition at the Crawford studios in Box Hill, which at the time was the breeding ground for most Australian-produced television drama. Now I believe it is the site of a Bunnings Warehouse. I thought I did pretty well, but one of my mates, Paul Hall, got the role and I missed out. Paul went on to play the part of Mick Dalton, acting alongside some great talent such as Kylie Minogue, Ben Mendelsohn and Nadine Garner.

Missing out on that role hit me hard. ‘There you go,’ I thought, ‘I had my big chance to be in television and it’s gone.’ It felt like the entire entertainment industry had said, ‘You can’t do this; this is not your calling.’ I know now that what they were really saying was that I wasn’t right for that role; sure, maybe I did a bad job of the audition, but it didn’t mean I couldn’t get it right next time.

On the day I learned that I’d missed out, though, I wondered whether it would be my one and only opportunity — not that I was ever going to stop looking for chances, but I didn’t think they were going to come my way too often. After all, I thought, in the world of television and entertainment, how often does the Bus of Opportunity come through? Am I going to sit in a desert on a long dirt track where you can see all the way to the horizon and you still don’t see a bus coming your way for days on end, or will one come past every five minutes? In my experience I’d only ever seen two; it just went past me and someone else got to ride it instead. That didn’t stop me wanting to act, and it didn’t kill the passion to perform; it just broke my heart that I didn’t get to do it this time.

It was a long while before the next bus arrived.

CHAPTER SEVEN

DEAD BY 28

When my time to finish school rolled around, I felt that I needed to study a little more. Other than acting, I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to do with my life, but when you go to a technical school it generally means you’ll go on to be a plumber or a welder or a carpenter. I wasn’t planning to do any of those things, so I looked through some college courses and decided to study accounting and law. Didn’t want to be an accountant, didn’t want to be a lawyer, but I felt that it would make me a smarter man.

For six or seven months I studied accounting and law, but I really wasn’t that interested. That was clear to me, and to the college too: they said to my mum, ‘I don’t think Shane’s really taking much of it on board.’ So I decided to get a job. I wrote up a résumé that included some references from influential people in the school and the community, Scouting commissioners and the like. All through my youth I’d done holiday work in various businesses and factories, so I had a good number of people who would write nice things about me. Despite the distraction factor I’d done okay at school, so my results came up pretty well too. I printed up a bunch of these résumés and put them in a leather briefcase that I’d purchased for myself. I’d always wanted my own briefcase. I put on my neatest clothes and a shoestring leather tie and headed off to the city. I spent a day just walking around the city, going into offices and looking for work.

I had a friend, Hamish, who used to holiday at Moorabbee Lodge Caravan Park. Hamish worked for Westpac, in the old Ansett Building in Swanston Street in the city; it was a pretty distinctive building, the shape of a 50-cent coin if you looked at it from the top. I knew where his building was, and that he was up on the eleventh or twelfth floor, so I went up there to ask him whether they were taking anyone on. ‘Actually, they are taking some people on soon,’ Hamish told me. Hundreds and hundreds of people had already sent in their résumés for Westpac’s current recruitment round and interviews were well under way.

All the same, I came back a few days later and went up to the young woman on the front desk. ‘I’m here to see Mr Turner,’ I said, giving the name of the head of personnel that Hamish had mentioned. I sat down in the foyer to wait, and after a few minutes the receptionist called me over. ‘We haven’t got an appointment,’ she said, ‘but if you wait there Mr Turner will see you after his next meeting.’

Eventually I was taken along to Mr Turner’s office. He invited me to sit down and said, ‘I don’t actually have an appointment listed here for you.’

‘No, you don’t, sir,’ I replied, ‘but I’m here now.’

Thank goodness I had in my résumé a number of references from the Scouting movement because, as it turned out, Mr Turner had been involved in Scouting too. By the time we’d finished chatting he said, ‘Look, just so long as you pass the medical you’ve got a job here.’ Two weeks later I started working with Westpac.

First up I worked in their card-services centre, checking details and inputting data for credit-card applications. A little less than a year later I got a promotion of sorts, working in lost and stolen cards, then I was moved into investigations.

By the time I was seventeen I was one of Westpac’s youngest investigators of credit-card fraud. It was a sensitive task that brought together a complex mesh of financial and legal considerations, for which my studies in accounting and law prepared me in no way whatsoever.

A Catholic priest I knew through Scouting once said to me, ‘If you don’t slow your life down, you’ll be dead by 28.’ Considering who the priest worked for — the very guy who may or may not decide when you start living, but I am pretty sure decides when you stop — that was a little alarming. I was in Venturers at the time and doing Gang Show on weekends, working on projects at school, and at night dobbing myself in for every committee I could get myself on. As my big brother Clayton once put it, they didn’t make pies fast enough for me to put my fingers in.

So for a little while I thought, ‘Wow, I should probably take that warning very seriously.’ I did that for about ten minutes, and then I got too busy to remember that I’d be dead by the time I was 28.

At my day job at Westpac, it wasn’t long before I got itchy feet. Staring at documents all day wasn’t my forte, even though much of the work was fascinating. Back in the days before internet banking, when someone had their credit card stolen out of their wallet or car or letterbox, the bank had to piece together a paper trail. Identity theft is a worry nowadays, but back then it was easier for someone to keep using a card fraudulently, right up until the victim got their printed statement and realised some impostor was out there using their card number or their actual card.

There were times clients told us their cards had been stolen while they were actually spending the money themselves. Quite a lot of discretion and judgment were required, and our department spent a fair amount of time talking to people, trying to get to the truth of the situation. Because I had quite a deep voice, I came across as a convincing investigator. Very rarely would I interview anyone face to face, in part because it wouldn’t have the same impact to have someone sitting across the desk from a teenage kid asking them about their financial affairs. However, I did have a role to play that fed my never-ceasing urge to perform.

Sometimes customers would claim that someone had taken their card and was using it in ATMs around Melbourne. At the time Westpac only had about nine security cameras set up at ATMs in hot spots around town. If we were suspicious of someone making a false claim, we would call them into the office. One of our bosses, Greg or Gerard, would sit them down and regardless of which ATMs the cards had been used in they would always say, ‘The great news is we have cameras in those ATMs that the thief has used.’ They would call me into the office, give me a list and ask me to take out all the footage from those ATMs on the specific days and send the films off for developing. I would go to the film drawer, which was outside the glass-windowed office so they could see my every move, and put any film from any ATM into a bag. I swear you could tell almost immediately by the look on the client’s face if they were the ones making the withdrawals. We would say goodbye and tell them we would be in touch with them very soon. Many of them would ring us back about two hours later and say, ‘It’s okay, it turned out my husband had been using it,’ or ‘My sixteen-year-old son just confessed to borrowing my card.’

I was always very proud of my performances, and often wanted to take a bow at the end of the scene as the client walked past with a look in their eyes as if they had just seen a ghost riding a unicycle in a fish suit: a look of fear, shock and confusion. We had no way of proving them wrong back then; it was just a good old game of bluff. Now most ATMs do have cameras, so that game is over.

These investigations had their moments, but working in an office wasn’t really my thing. Friday night was the highlight of my working week, when I truly felt like a young businessman. Carrying my leather briefcase and dressed in my work attire of slacks with shirt and tie, I’d go into the city on the tram in the morning, work hard all day, then a bunch of us would go out for drinks. Afterwards I’d take the number 57 tram home to Avondale Heights. I’m sure everyone has a story of falling asleep on a tram or a train or a bus and ending up 30 kilometres from home, but my stop was Maribyrnong, the last stop on the line. That worked out well because if I’d drunk too much I could fall asleep on the tram, then the conductor would wake me up at Maribyrnong and I’d get off and commence the short walk home to Avondale Heights.

Mum and Dave would be asleep when I got in, so I was able to get to bed without anyone noticing that I was a tad tipsy and a touch topsy-turvy. The next morning Dave would be out doing chores and Mum would be teaching calisthenics. Dad would come and pick me up on a Saturday morning. When I’d hopped in the car he’d say, ‘How are you, son?’ and I’d say, ‘I’m a bit tired this morning.’ After a while Dad realised that ‘tired’ meant I had a bit of a hangover, so he started asking, ‘How’d you go last night — are you very, very tired?’

‘Yeah,’ I’d say, ‘I’m very tired.’

‘You must have drunk quite a lot of tired last night,’ he’d reply. That was always his way, to give everything a spin with those turns of phrase he and his brothers all used. Even when he was angry, Dad would be amusing without even trying. Once when I was a kid, I was in the car with him when another driver, a bloke in a ute with a dog in the passenger’s seat, cut him off. It didn’t do the bloke much good because at the next intersection we pulled up next to him at the lights. Dad looked across at him and said, ‘Hey, mate, why don’t you move over and let the dog drive?’

Apart from my Friday-night outings, I treated my itchy feet by throwing myself into other activities. At night I was performing in Gang Show and on the weekends I was heavily involved in Venturers and then Rovers. I was also the lead singer in a covers band called the Powder Monkeys, which is a common nickname for pyrotechnicians. At least, our band was called that until another band came along and claimed the same name. After a brief standoff we became the Pyro Monkeys. We had a lot of fun doing a bit of Rolling Stones and some AC/DC and Noiseworks, plenty of classic Aussie rock. In a pub on a Friday night was one of the few times I could have a few beers while I was performing. Two great loves of mine are entertaining and having a beer. If I could figure out how to race a car while I was doing both, that would be Nirvana — a state of Nirvana, as opposed to the band. I loved the rehearsing almost as much as the performing: I got to hang out with like-minded people and play the music we enjoyed, but without an audience, so it was our chance to brush it up and get it right. We weren’t too bad and we pulled some good crowds, mostly because all of my mates used to come along and fill the pub. That made us popular with the pub owner, whose goal was to get people through the door and buying beers.

Holidays — well, I didn’t really take holidays; instead, I would use my annual leave from Westpac to do other jobs. I always liked to have a few things on the go. As a kid I’d work through the school holidays to make money. I’d be saving up to fix up my dirt bike or to buy petrol for it, for a waterski or some Rip Curl shirts, and let’s not forget the small bucket of coins for the jukebox and pinball machines at the caravan park.

When I got a little older, the way I made some money on the side was with fireworks. One of my best buddies was Steve Lawton; Steve and I were shoulder to shoulder in most endeavours. We rode our bikes around the suburbs, went to school together, did Venturers together and to this very day are the best of friends. Steve had a small build when he was a kid and as a young teenager. But later on in high school — over the course of a single Christmas holiday it seemed — he turned into a giant of a man. Steve always said I was there to back him up if anyone picked on him because he was smaller than the rest. All of a sudden I didn’t have to do that any more: he was a big strapping guy, eventually hitting six foot four.

Especially through our teenage years I’d be up at Steve’s house or in his dad’s factory most weekends, fixing up cars and doing other boys’ stuff. The Lawtons — Steve and his sister, Jenny, and their parents, Des and Lynn — were like a second family to me; I used to call Steve’s mother ‘Mum’. I had quite a lot of mums: there was Mum, then Dad married Gloria and she was my step-mum, and some time after she passed away Dad was with Lorraine, who was another step-mum. No one can ever replace your own mother, but it’s nice to have some spares in the wings.

Steve and I used to get up to mischief at times. Among other enthusiasms, like most kids I guess, we shared a love of blowing things up. Steve’s dad, Des, used to build and race speedboats; he was also the Victorian manager of Syd Howard Fireworks International, doing displays for concerts and festivals and the like, and that made the wish to blow things up a little easier to realise. One day we got hold of a little device called a lifting charge, which is a powerful explosive charge they use in fireworks to send the shells into the air. We put it inside a Coke can and then put that on the ground at the back of Steve’s place in this big easement that was an open area as big as a paddock. Then we decided to put an upside-down ceramic pot over the top of it and another ceramic pot over the top of that. We ran a fuse to it and lit it without thinking that these pots over the top would starve the fuse of oxygen, and that the heavy pots had crushed the fuse somewhat. The fuse was only a foot long, so we moved away pretty smartly. We stood there for ten or twenty seconds then decided, ‘Oh well, nothing’s going to happen.’ Then all of a sudden there was a BOOM followed by whiz, whiz, whiz, whoosh, whiz, then oddly from behind us the sound of bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. It was so loud, it echoed through the whole neighbourhood. There was dust and smoke everywhere and nothing but a bare spot on the ground where those pots had been. We scarpered towards the gate in Steve’s back fence to hide in his yard until things died down a bit. Quite a few locals had gathered in the paddock to try and figure out what the explosion was, so we went back into the paddock and joined them, trying to put on our best ‘What the hell happened here?’ faces. It wasn’t until we walked back towards Steve’s fence that we noticed shards of ceramic pot impaled all along the fence like knives into a cork board. This was what had caused the whizzes and bangs after the initial boom. It was sheer luck that we were not both stabbed to death by shards of flying ceramic garden pots.

To the outside world we seemed model citizens, though. Steve used to help his dad out in the fireworks business, which was akin to Dracula working behind the counter in the blood bank. Then one year Des Lawton asked me to help out with setting up fireworks for the Royal Melbourne Show. I worked hard and got the hang of it fairly quickly, so I started helping them here and there, setting up fireworks from the age sixteen and firing them from the age of seventeen or eighteen. I am proud to say that despite being blown off my feet a few times and copping a few scars and scares, I still possess exactly the same number of fingers that I started with. A client once asked me for a résumé of my pyrotechnic work, so I faxed him a photocopy of my hands and wrote on the paper, ‘I have been doing it for more years than there are fingers in this picture.’

In complete contrast, one of the other places I worked was Unsworth Dental Supplies. Some friends of Mum owned the business, so they got me working there through the school holidays packing jars with toys that dentists would give to kids for behaving well in the chair.

When I decided it was time to move on from Westpac, there was a chance for me to work behind the counter at Unsworth’s, selling medical and dental supplies to dentists and dental technicians. What I really aspired to was a job as a sales rep: the Unsworth reps got a brand-new company car and drove around in nice clothes visiting the dentists and technicians. I’d turned eighteen not long before, so I was considered a bit young to be a sales rep; the reps either had a dental background or took a few years getting to know the products before going out on the road. At least working behind the counter I could learn the products.

After I’d been there for six months, a sales rep job came up and I asked the boss, ‘Would you consider me?’ He reckoned I was a bit young and needed more knowledge under my belt; all the same, one of the sales reps went on holiday not long after that and I filled in for her for two weeks. That was a chance to prove myself and I must have done okay because when the next sales rep position became available I said again that I thought I could do a fairly good job; we had a bit of a chat and next thing you know I was given the job. I was the youngest dental rep they’d ever put on.

There I was at the age of nineteen with a brand-new car of my own to drive. Mobile phones had just come out, so I put a Uniden mobile phone in that brand-new car, whacked on my P-plates and there I was, a travelling sales rep. For two years, I covered more than 1400 kilometres a week on country and suburban roads, selling medication and false teeth. Driving became a large part of my life because I also spent many weekends travelling country Victoria as a pyrotechnician doing firework displays, as well as doing comedy shows, amateur theatre performances and gigs with my band. I loved being on the road, so I started picking destinations further away, driving trucks to Sydney and Brisbane. I even took a camper van with my mate Geoff Maher to Alice Springs, just to spend a few days there and drive back. I can honestly say I have driven most of Australia.

I can also honestly say it hasn’t always gone well. Over my two years as a rep I had five fairly decent accidents. One day I was driving between Geelong and Ballarat in Victoria and needed to relieve myself of fluids, or should I say splash the boots, so I decided to head down a small dirt road off the main highway and find a spot to pee. Off this track, I found another, more winding dirt track that had some fairly tight corners on it where I figured I could have a little bit of fun while locating the perfect spot. All of a sudden a car came round the corner on the wrong side of the road and hit the right-hand front quarter panel of my Vacationer Commodore wagon. I quickly got out of my car and began my spiel of ‘Where did you get your licence? Was it a toy one that came out of a box of Cornflakes?’ Before I had a chance to finish, the lady driver said, ‘I do apologise, I wasn’t expecting anyone in my driveway this morning,’ and then asked me what it was I wanted with her. I didn’t feel I could say that I was getting in a bit of rally practice on her amazingly windy gravel driveway while finding the perfect place to piss, so I said that I was in the area taking some photos of Australian bushland to send back to my Swedish girlfriend so she could see what Australia was really like. It wasn’t a total lie because at the time I did have a Swedish girlfriend, who was at the time in Sweden, but she well and truly knew what Australia looked like because that was where I’d met her.

Falling asleep behind the wheel of a car isn’t something I am at all proud of, and it is something that I would never let happen again, but it is something that has happened to me more times than I care to admit. With all the jobs, groups and committees I was involved with, I wasn’t getting much sleep. I twice fell asleep at traffic lights and both times my foot slipped off the brake pedal, which in an automatic car means it is still in gear. Both times the car drove forward, hitting the car in front of me. The first time I shocked a lady on her way to work in the morning, and the second time I startled a bride in her wedding car. Believe it or not the bride thought it was hilarious; I, on the other hand, wanted their BMW to back over me because at that point death sounded like a better option than ruining someone’s wedding day.

My mate Steve will never let me forget the time he and I were on our way back from Warrnambool, a large country town about 280 kilometres out of Melbourne. We had driven there that day to do a fireworks show at the Premier Speedway event. After arriving there and getting the fireworks prepared before we went out on to the arena to set everything up, the rain set in and the organisers had to cancel the display. So we packed everything into the trailer and the back of Steve’s HQ station wagon (which we had beautifully restored and modified) and I got the gig of driving the second leg — the journey home. I’d been awake for close to 24 hours straight when I took the wheel. As we were heading past the showgrounds in Melbourne, Big Steve woke from an hour’s slumber in the passenger’s seat, looked out the window and said, ‘Great, we’re nearly home.’ He turned to me only to find that I was asleep. Deciding it was probably a good idea to wake up the driver of a car full of unexploded fireworks, he did so and then said, ‘How bloody long have you been asleep?’

‘I don’t bloody know. I was fast asleep like you were.’

Young and foolish is my excuse, but the truth is there are no excuses. I was a very lucky young man, and as a result I now lecture anyone who even looks like driving slightly tired because I know how fast it can creep up. I find myself repeating the police slogan, ‘Better to be late than dead on arrival.’

This was something I learned the hard way by having attended so many accidents. Apart from the ones I’ve been in, accidents seem to happen near me all the time. My brother Clay asked me one time, ‘Do you drive around looking for these or do they just happen in front of you?’

I have pulled so many people out of crashed cars that I am not even sure how many exactly. I was at a party once and a girl came up to me and said, ‘Wow, it’s you.’ This was well before I had a recognisable head, so I said, ‘I am so sorry, I can’t think where I know you from.’ She went on to explain that I had pulled her out of a written-off car many years earlier.

Despite all of the close calls and madness, I continued to burn the candle at both ends and I had that candle stored in an oven constantly set on high. I was working incredibly hard and at one point was feeling somewhat the worse for it. As I left work one night, Peter Unsworth, the owner of Unsworth Dental Supplies, said to me, ‘Shane, you’ve got to be here at six a.m. for a sales meeting then get on the road for your normal rounds. Promise me you’re going to go home, have a meal and lie down and get some rest so you can be here first thing in the morning, healthy and ready to work. Don’t tell me you’re going to be off doing things till all hours like you usually do.’

‘No, of course I’ll go home and get some rest,’ I assured him. What I didn’t tell him was that I’d already agreed to work for Des Lawton at the MCG that evening, doing fireworks for the Collingwood Centennial match against Carlton.

I went out to the MCG and was running around the arena in my pyrotechnics overalls, setting up the fireworks. The show went well and after the match I finished packing up, went home to bed and got as much sleep as I could, five hours before I was due back at work for my six a.m. meeting. The next morning Peter Unsworth came over to me and said, ‘Shane, did you go home and get a good rest last night?’

‘Yes, I did,’ I told him.

‘Oh, that’s interesting,’ he replied. ‘Was it not you I saw on television last night when the cameras zoomed in on a pyrotechnician in the middle of the MCG? Was it not you I saw in a pair of white overalls setting up fireworks?’

‘Well, yes,’ I said, ‘I may have had to do some fireworks first, but after that I went straight home and got as much rest as I could.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE

I am always extremely confident in a crowd of people, but the one thing I didn’t have the confidence to do was to say to a girl, ‘Would you like to go out with me?’ I was that guy, the one who was great at being funny and having a good time with them, but I wouldn’t actually come out and say, ‘Do you want to go out with me?’ I used to wear them down instead. It got to the point where a few girlfriends gave up and said, ‘Shane, we’ve already been out to dinner a few times, this is getting stupid — if you want to be my boyfriend, just ask me.’ One girl handed me a bunch of flowers and said, ‘I’ll ask you because clearly you’re not going to ask me.’

A lot of my friends were better looking than me: taller, darker and more handsome. They might have been able to do a great job at getting a one-night stand, but I’d meet a girl at a party and then I’d meet them at the next party and I’d keep joking and having a chat, and in the end it was perseverance that got them. The good side of that is that a lot of girls had been friends with me for some time before they became girlfriends. When we ceased being an item we would still see each other because we were all part of a group of buddies, so it was always friendly.

One of the first serious girlfriends I ever had was a girl called Karen Smith. I was sixteen and we would do all of those sweet things like post each other teddy bears. We were young, though, and I think we just fell out of love. Or maybe I saw a Malvern Star bike ride past and forgot to ring her. Who knows — we were silly and innocent and all the wonderful things that first love is.

When I worked at Westpac I went out with a nice girl called Amanda for a year or two, and after that I was with a lovely girl called Tracey for two years. Tracey and I remained friends after we broke up, and I feel particularly fortunate for that, not only because she is a good person but because I left her for another girl and she found it in her heart to let me stay a friend. In December 1990 I was working on the Rover World Moot, a gathering of people aged eighteen to 25 from around the world. I was broadcasting a radio show for the Moot, and a girl called Annika came into the studio to request a song. I was instantly attracted to her and it turned out she was to me. I quickly found out that Annika had an adventurous spirit, which is a large part of what brought us together. Though we only had a few weeks before Annika had to go back to her home in Sweden, we became a couple. And this is how one of the longest diversions on my winding road to making a life as a performer began.

After Annika went back to Sweden, our relationship became a long-distance one, maintained by letter and postcard and phone. Annika kept telling me, ‘I will come back.’ And she did: because of that adventurous nature of hers, after six months she came back to Australia. Thanks to my lifelong friends Craig and Andra Bacon offering us a room, Annika and I lived together with them in their new home in Glen Waverley.

Six months later Annika flew back to Sweden, and for the next seven months we were apart once again. In 1992 I was asked to be on a committee as the Australian Activities Coordinator for that year’s World Moot in Switzerland. There I met up with Annika again; we attended the Moot for a few weeks then went on to Sweden. Our plan was to stay with her family for a few weeks, then backpack around Europe for a month or so before returning to Sweden.

Annika and I had a fantastic time backpacking around Europe, but when we came back to Sweden I had no money at all. After a month of living out of backpacks, the first thing we wanted to do when we reached Annika’s mother and stepfather’s house was to have a hot shower. We’d only been in the house an hour or so when the phone rang; Annika’s mother answered it. I could hear her speaking in broken English, then she called out to me, ‘Shane, the phone call is for you.’

I picked up the receiver and there was an Australian voice on the other end saying, ‘G’day, Shane is it?’

‘Yeah, it is,’ I said.

‘My name’s Rod and I’m from Australia. I’m living here in Stockholm, and I heard there was another Australian in town. Are you looking for work?’

‘You bet I am,’ I said.

‘Come into town tomorrow, I’ll meet you on Söder. I run a business that washes cars and trucks and I’m looking for hard-working people to help me out.’

I went and met this bloke in a pub in Söder, an island in central Stockholm. His name was Rod Collins and I knew straight away he was a terrific bloke. He’s still a great bloke, and to this day we’re still great mates. He was married to a Swedish woman called Sanna, and they’ve now got two beautiful daughters.

Back at that first lunch, Rod asked me, ‘Do you want a beer or something to eat?’

‘No, I’m fine,’ I said.

‘I’m going to have something to eat,’ he said. ‘Are you sure you don’t want a beer?’

‘Nah, nah, I’m fine.’

‘You don’t like beer?’

‘Oh yeah, I like beer all right,’ I said.

‘You’re broke, aren’t you?’ Rod said.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘I don’t reckon any bloke would say no to a beer unless they were worried they couldn’t shout you back.’

Right there and then Rod offered to lend me 5000 krona, which was about a thousand Australian dollars. ‘You’ll be able to pay me back when you work for me,’ he said. I’ve never forgotten him for that, and I never will.

The following Monday I started working for Rod, washing cars and trucks with a bunch of other guys from around the world. Before I knew it I was working five or six days a week, making pretty good money. It was all cash in hand because I didn’t have a work visa, only a visitor’s visa.

Rod himself worked as hard as two farmers and ten shearers, so I worked pretty hard too and took on shift after shift. There was one contract we did on a weekend for Posten Järfälla, the Swedish postal service. Every Saturday four of us would wash 120 trucks and twenty vans. We’d go like cut cats with salt in their wounds, using high-pressure washing guns that blew so hard that if you held it too close to the truck you’d blow the badges off.

One evening I was coming home along the freeway after finishing off a job. I was driving a four-wheel-drive with a trailer behind it loaded with all our washing gear and a big diesel motor that we used to run the high-pressure hot washer. An Australian called Dave, who was working with us, was sitting beside me in the passenger’s seat. We both had our overalls on with the company name written across the back: Park Wash. I was never quite sure why this Swedish-owned company had an English name. So there we were, driving along in red work overalls with an English company name on the back. Neither of us had a working visa; I’d been in Sweden well over six months by then so my visitor’s visa had run out, and in any case, I sure as heck shouldn’t have been working.

We’d gone through a couple of black-ice patches. In Sweden, as in any place where it’s very cold, the water on the road turns to ice and you get what’s known as black ice. Driving down the freeway, you can’t see it but you can hear it: the normal hum of tyres on a road turns to silence. Everything goes quiet because you’re now sliding literally on thin ice. You just have to keep your hands on the wheel and try to stay off the brakes. Conditions had been sufficiently hairy that Dave and I were both thinking, ‘Thank God we got through that alive, it’s been a good day.’

All of a sudden a police car appears out of nowhere and pulls us over. They’ve noticed the registration sticker: it expired a week ago. The police get us out of the car and they’re asking for our ID. I don’t have my passport on me, so I start speaking English as fast as I can to try to bamboozle them. The Swedes are very intelligent people and they can all speak English inconceivably well, but I figure the faster I speak the harder it will be for them to understand me.

‘Yeah, borrowed a mate’s car, geez it’s cold, he asked me to drive it back to the city for him, I found some overalls in the back, had to put these overalls on cos, ooh boy, it’s cold’ — making it as Aussie as I can as well as fast so they can’t understand what I am banging on about.

I think I managed to bamboozle them for a bit; all the same, they told me to unscrew the number plates, saying, ‘We’re going to have to take the plates from you.’ While lying on the freezing cold road undoing the screws, I’m thinking, ‘This is okay, I’ve got them confused enough that I might just get away with this.’ Then they called someone on the radio and fifteen minutes later an unmarked car pulled up and two men in suits got out. They spoke English perfectly; I reckon they could have corrected my English homework at school. There was no way I was going to bamboozle them for a second. They needed to see both of our passports, they said, and if we didn’t have our passports with us, we would need to bring them in the following day. Then they wrote down an address for us that included the words ‘Swedish Jail House’.

The next morning I took my passport and headed off to the jail. ‘Look, I’m not sure whether I’ll be back,’ I told Annika.

Down at the jail there were a lot of people from every European country you could name and a few I bet you couldn’t, all of them there to sort out some visa or passport problem. This time I spoke every word of Swedish I could. Jacobson is a pretty common name in Scandinavia, and having blue eyes and blondish hair back then I looked like I fitted in there more than most. I spoke the best Swedish I could, to let them know I was assimilating; I explained that I was in love with a Swedish woman — I’m basically the next best thing to a Swede. I was as nice as I could be to the guy at the counter, asking him if it was a very busy day for him. He listened to me talking and looked me over for a while. The front of this room was crowded with people speaking every language under the sun. He was going to have to speak to them in English as the common language, which was probably going to be hard work for him, so I tried to make the few minutes I was with him as easy as possible. In the end he just looked at me then at the rest of the room. He stamped my passport, winked at me and said, ‘Get out of here.’ He’d extended my visa and I wasn’t going to be thrown out of the country.

In Sweden I did a great deal of growing up. I was a young man in love and Sweden was an amazing place to be. Annika and I set ourselves up in a little one-bedroom apartment, I got to sail around the Arctic Archipelago on her dad’s sailing boat, and on weekends we’d have parties on islands. I worked very hard but I’d made a mate in Rod Collins, so I had a buddy there I could chat to in English with ease. Every now and then we’d have a drink. He’s a proud Queenslander so he’d talk to me about Rugby League and I’d talk to him about AFL, and then he would make me watch re-runs of Broncos matches on video — the only odd thing was he would sometimes barrack as if the outcome might be different from what we already knew the result was.

A fireworks company over there found out I was a pyrotechnician, so I landed some work with them. We were booked to do the re-launch of the Swedish airport, so one day I found myself on the roof of the airport preparing to set off fireworks. I figure that one of the places you’d want to avoid firing fireworks near would be an aeroplane, but their wish was to mark the event with a fireworks show.

Up on the airport roof, we were working on long sections set on an angle, covered with moisture that had turned to ice. At one point I stood up to move across and wire up some fireworks; my feet went out from under me and I started sliding down the roof, going faster and faster and faster, my big, puffy, full-bodied rain suit offering no traction whatsoever. I was effectively on the world’s largest ice slide, about to shoot off the roof of a very tall building — tall enough to not want to fall from, anyway. In the end the only thing I could grab on the way down was a rack of fireworks, all connected up by cables. ‘Fantastic,’ I was thinking, ‘I’m now pulling on firework cables while falling off a roof.’ But against all reasonable expectation, the cables held and saved me. As a bonus, they didn’t go off and launch a hundred firework shells earlier than planned.

There was something about Park Wash that seemed to attract sirens, or maybe that was just me. One day I was in an underground car park washing cars with Rod’s wife, Sanna. All of a sudden we could hear sirens and they were getting awfully close. An armed robbery had taken place and in the course of making a getaway, the robbers had driven down the ramp to an underground car park that would lead them nowhere. Except to Sanna and me, washing cars with a high-pressure water gun.

When they got to the bottom and hit the final boom gate (again literally) the robbers jumped out of the car and took off on foot. We heard screaming and sirens and cars smashing, then watched two guys run past us, one of them carrying a bag. Sanna ran and hid behind a car, but I was so intrigued by what was going on that I just stood right in the middle of the car park. I had my water gun in my hand and I held that forward, thinking, ‘If anyone does anything I’ll just shoot them in the face with water.’ It would really hurt, too; these guns were powerful enough to rip mud and salt and grease off cars.

There’s me just standing there and Sanna freaking out behind a car. These guys had reached a dead end, so the police came down and caught them. Afterwards Sanna said, ‘Why on earth would you just stand there and watch?’

‘I was curious,’ I told her.

I realise now that it was a stupid thing to do, but I’ve always been a bit of a fool that way, always thinking, ‘She’ll be right.’ Maybe I thought I was invincible, but I was completely happy to stand in the midst of this scene. It felt as though I was in a movie, except I didn’t have to act; I just had to stand still and shoot the villains in the face with a water gun.

I had an incredible time living in Sweden and experiencing Europe for the first time, backpacking with Annika through the UK, Germany, Monaco, Austria, Greece, Italy and France. One of my finest memories is of sitting by the River Seine in Paris; Annika and I had very little money so we were eating chunks of baguette, cutting hunks of cheese with a Swiss Army knife and drinking a Bulgarian red out of the bottle. From memory the wine tasted a little like an anchovy’s sweat, but we didn’t care; we sat on our backpacks and felt that life couldn’t get any better.

But the time finally came to go home. One of my best mates, Damien Lippiatt, was getting married and he had asked me to be his best man. I wasn’t going to miss his wedding for anything, so I decided to head back to Australia.

When I left Sweden, Annika and I weren’t sure what we were going to do. We knew that I would have to go home and make some more money, as well as being part of Damien’s wedding. We spent the next six or seven months as a long-distance couple again, until I realised it was just impossible for me. I couldn’t live in Sweden washing cars and trucks. Annika wanted to study and have a career and she didn’t want to leave her family in Sweden. I wanted to stay in Australia to carve out a career. That part at least was clear to both of us: Annika knew even then that I wanted to be an actor, and I couldn’t do that in a country where English wasn’t the first language.

After seven months, Annika and I agreed not that we would separate but that we would get on with our lives and just stay in touch. So that’s what we did; her life has gone on and she is now married to a wonderful man and they have two children. For a long while we would contact each other every year or so just to update each other on where we were at; these days we occasionally exchange a comment on Facebook. We definitely made the right decision to move on with our separate lives. Annika and I have great photos and, more importantly, memories that will last forever.

I have been fortunate when it comes to partners: they have all possessed great souls. When I was younger and I would take a girlfriend along to meet my friends or my family for the first time, no one would be able to tell in advance what they would look like because I was always attracted to the soul within as opposed to the look on the outside. Having said that, they were all blessed with beauty as well, but I would like to think that was a coincidence.

Years after returning from Sweden I met a wonderful woman called Heather, who became my girlfriend. Heather is still a close friend and a great mate to both myself and my partner Fliss. After Heather, I was with a terrific girl, Penny, for two years, who stayed a friend after we broke up. Later, with my partner Kellie, I had the joy of becoming a father.

I feel very fortunate to have had relationships with such good-hearted people. All of them are ‘people people’, too, the kind of people who like to socialise, which is perhaps why I was drawn to them and they to me.

While love took me to Sweden, my big sister, Kim, found love in a tiny town in England. Like Mum, Kim is a great saver of money. They are both so good at saying, ‘This is what I want and I’m going to save hard for it.’ That’s how Mum was able to buy a block of land when she was nineteen, and her ability to be thrifty came in handy when she was raising three kids on her own before David came on the scene. So when Kim set her sights on an overseas trip she used the skills that Mum had given her and saved long and hard for her travels, putting together thousands of dollars to cover her airfare and a good long stretch of several months travelling around the world on her own. Money saved and tickets booked, off she set.

When she arrived in England, Kim stayed with our stepfather David’s relatives in a town called Hitchin, about an hour’s train ride from London, which is where David grew up. Hitchin is one of those charming historical market towns that England excels in producing. It first appeared in the history books in AD792, when King Offa of Mercia founded a religious house on land occupied by the Hicce tribe. These days there are few kings or tribes there: it is not a large town, with only 30,000 or so residents. Even so, while staying in Hitchin, Kim met a man called Ian and fell in love with him.

This was in the days before the internet and email and Skype, so Kim sent us letters and cards and photos. First we heard that Kim had met a guy. Very soon after that we got a message to say they were getting engaged. Next we heard about the engagement party, followed soon after by the news that they were coming back to Australia to get married. After that they would have to go back to England for a while, but they would eventually come back to Australia to live.

With a week to go before their wedding, Kim and Ian flew out to Australia. Before they arrived, Kim had asked me if I would be best man because Ian knew no one in Australia. ‘Absolutely,’ I said, ‘it would be an honour to be your best man, sis.’ I was still living at the family home in Avondale Heights then, so when Ian arrived, he stayed at our house and we shared a room. I had one week to get to know him, so I did what any self-respecting young Australian male would do. To find out what this bloke who was going to marry my sister was like, I took him out and got him drunk.

On the day of the wedding, Ian and I were having yet another drink in an establishment somewhere in Chapel Street in Melbourne. We sat up at the bar and I ordered some beers, then we said cheers, congratulations and good luck.

‘Celebrating something today, boys, are we?’ the barman enquired.

‘Yes, this man is going to marry my sister, and I’m his best man,’ I told him.

‘Well, that’s wonderful. How long have you two been mates?’

‘A week.’

‘Oh. Well, good on ya, that sounds very exciting. When’s the wedding?’

‘This afternoon,’ we told him, ‘so you’d better be quick!’

We had ourselves a few beers in that bar and I rang Kim to wind her up a bit. ‘Look, Ian’s pretty drunk,’ I told her, ‘but I’ll get him sobered up before the wedding.’

‘Don’t you do this to me,’ she said, starting to get agitated.

It was her wedding day, after all, so I let her off the hook quicker than usual. ‘He’s fine,’ I told her. ‘Don’t worry about a thing.’

After a wonderful wedding service, the reception was held at our house. It was without a doubt one of the funniest weddings I’ve ever been a part of. I’ve seen a good number of them, too: I’ve been MC or sung at more weddings than Zsa Zsa Gabor has been bride at, and Clay and I had videoed a bunch; then there are the ones I’ve attended as a guest. This was one of the best of the lot, even though it was just a whole bunch of people squeezed into our family home. It just goes to prove that if you jam enough family together for a celebration, it will beat any posh awards night or celebrity event. Clay and I made the most of the comic aspects of the event in our speeches, of course, with one-liners like, ‘In all the minutes I’ve known Ian …’ But a great event like that is really all about the people. Nothing else matters: you could be standing in a barn knocking back beer and meat pies, just so long as you’ve got the right people there and there’s enough to celebrate; it can’t get better than that.

You always learn a little from someone when you share a relationship. Even when I parted ways with a girlfriend or partner for one reason or another, I never regretted having been with them. I think we learn to be better partners by being in relationships and learning how to give and take and offer something to one another — and give up something of yourself for each other as well.

Felicity and I have the best relationship of all because we’ve both come to it with all the herbs and spices from our previous relationships. And now our relationship is roast lamb every single night. We’re now the perfect partners for each other.

Some of that is down to the way we were brought up and the influence of our parents and our peers. I thank all of my previous partners for getting me into the right shape to be the partner that I am now, which according to Felicity is a fair bit more than okay.

CHAPTER NINE

BLOWING STUFF UP

I’ve got a curious mind, so I like collecting experiences. That’s the approach I took to jobs: it was all about collecting experiences. Like so many kids, I had a paper round — in fact I had two paper rounds. My bike was stacked so high with papers that not only could I not see in front of me, I also couldn’t get off the bike. If I took my bum off the seat the bike would fall forward, so I just had to stay on and keep going until I’d delivered enough papers to lighten the load.

Some of my other jobs have been a little more unusual. Through Gang Show I was doing two-hander comedy routines with my mate Damien Lippiatt, him as the straight man and me as the goof again, just like in those early days of Gang Show. Right from when we were seventeen or so, we were doing corporate shows here and there. When we had just turned eighteen we started doing a slapstick comedy act at Rumpole’s Theatre Restaurant in Melbourne. We got free drinks, a free meal and $20, and to us that was a big deal: we were actually getting paid to do comedy. With our other mates Wayne Motton and Keith Stubley, we did vaudeville-style comedy acts and barber-shop quartets, musically led by our friend Alex Boemo.

Even though I always seemed to have more jobs than I knew what to do with, some of my riskier ventures have terrified Dad. Dad has always held job security in great regard and he said to me before I headed off to Sweden at the age of 22, ‘You’ve got a job as a sales rep, 120-odd clients and a mobile phone and a brand-new car, and you’re going to quit it all to follow a girl to Sweden. You’ve got a perfectly secure job! If you come back you’ll have no money. And don’t go thinking you’ll get any from me if you’re foolish enough to give up a wage.’

Maybe because of the tough times he’d been through when he was young, Dad hated the idea that I was going to throw in a job to go travelling. Mum and Dave were more relaxed about it all. Their attitude was, ‘Oh well, he’s going to go and experience the world.’

When I came back from Sweden after being there close to a year, as soon as I arrived I started ringing people and saying, ‘I’m back in town, what’s going on? Is there any work around?’ Within a week or two I got a job at French Knickers, a theatre restaurant in Richmond.

They were good times. I worked at French Knickers every Friday and Saturday for two years. They presented a themed variety show for their customers, and when I was there the theme was horror. As customers arrived at the door I greeted them dressed as the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Once everyone was in, I went upstairs, got changed and set up the back of the stage. Then when the show started I was the stage manager and operated the lighting and the sound. For a while there I would go on stage at the very start of the show and perform as the Hunchback, alongside a girl in the cast, Bindi Edwards, who’s become a friend of mine for life; we were flatmates for a while too. Quite often if they were a bit light on in the kitchen I’d help serve meals at intermission, then I’d go backstage again to reset the stage for the second half. When the show was finished I’d go and turn the stage into a dance floor, put up the hand rails and then I was the DJ.

One night some trouble started: a massive guy came in and was terrorising people. I quickly learned that I was also the bouncer. Before the police arrived I was the one who had to throw this enormous guy out; in the process he spun around and hit me in the side of the mouth with his elbow and knocked a corner off one of my teeth. We certainly put on a show for the patrons that night.

The backstage work did a great deal to satisfy my urge to be part of a performance, as well as appealing to the side of me that was fascinated with how things worked. But every now and then, when he saw me heading down these dirt tracks of distraction, Clay would turn up and say to me, ‘You know, you’ve just taken a wrong turn again. If you want to be on the highway that leads to a town called entertainment, what you’re doing right now is taking a back road. Sure, it’ll get you to that town, but it leads to the south side, and that’s not where the stage is.’ He was right, of course. I was doing little bits of entertainment that gave me enough nourishment to feed the bug, but it wasn’t the full dream. It’s the difference between kicking a football around the local oval with your mates and running out in front of a packed stadium as a professional player. I was kicking a football with mates.

Those years held a lot of back roads for me. My mate Wayne’s dad and his family owned a company called Motton Hire, and I worked part time there for a while too. At the time I was singing in a band and doing fireworks with the Lawtons, then on Saturday mornings I worked for the Mottons, hiring out concrete mixers, jackhammers and the like.

Of all those jobs, the most enduring was fireworks, which was what I did in my time off from full-time jobs. I did that for thirteen years, both outdoor and indoor fireworks, working on shows for bands like Bon Jovi, Guns N’ Roses, U2, Prince, AC/DC and Dire Straits on their Brothers in Arms tour — the list is longer than an orang-utan’s arm.

Concerts like Bon Jovi certainly opened my eyes: as a seventeen-year-old I was watching women throw underpants and bras on stage, with notes tied to them with their phone numbers and information about what they would be willing to do to try and make the lead singer of these bands a little bit happier than he already was. There were mounds of underwear and teddy bears all over the stage afterwards; I remember taking a bundle of bears and a few of the underpants and bras home and giving the toy bears to my little sister Nat, and showing my stepdad David some of the notes on the bras and undies, saying to him, ‘Read that! That’s unbelievable!’

I loved the song ‘Every Rose Has Its Thorn’, so when I worked on the Poison concert at the National Tennis Centre I decided to ask Bret Michaels where he got the idea from for that song. He was really nice; during a break in one of the sound checks he sat down on the front of the stage with me and we had a bit of a chat. Many years later I realised that would be the one question he got asked every single day. It’s like someone asking me, ‘Where did you and your brother get the idea for Kenny?’ I try to keep that moment in mind and remember that I’m no different from anyone else, asking the most obvious question.

Poison continued their tour around Australia after that but about a week later they had to come back to Melbourne to do another gig, this time at Festival Hall, a much smaller venue. We had to fit the same show into Festival Hall, and it didn’t actually fit. The back lighting truss was so low it would have hit Rikki Rockett, the drummer, in the head, so they had to pull lights off the truss just to get the whole set to squeeze in that venue. At one point, Bret Michaels came backstage with his girlfriend. He introduced me to her and we chatted for a few minutes. As they walked off together I remember thinking to myself, ‘That’s the most attractive girl I think I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m not even sure if she’s real.’ She was only about 21 at the time, but later the name Pamela Anderson meant considerably more to me and to the rest of the world.

They were amazing days. I was doing rock ’n’ roll shows, stadium concerts and festivals, being blown away by sitting next to massive sound systems and being blown off my feet. I’ve seen fireworks closer than I ever want to see them again.

Working in fireworks you get used to things going bang next to your head; if you’re not used to it you do get a bit of a fright. When I started out we fired them by hand, and things could get a little hairy at times. One of my favourite shows ever was Skyshow, a fireworks display that happened simultaneously all around the country on Australia Day. Each year hundreds of thousands of people would come along to the Melbourne show; everyone would bring a radio and tune it in to Fox-FM, and the fireworks were timed to the music. In Melbourne the Skyshow was held at Albert Park Lake, where the Formula One Grand Prix is now held, so throughout the display the whole park was alive with music; it was fantastic.

The Melbourne Skyshow took us all week to set up, so that accounted for a week’s annual leave from Westpac. We set up the fireworks in the middle of Albert Park Lake. One year a camera crew came out to the island to film us in action. At one point during the show a ten-inch shell went up in the air, failed to go off and landed back on the ground. A ten-inch shell is the size of a bowling ball, so imagine a bowling ball falling out of the sky and cracking you on the head. Luckily this thing hit the ground without taking out anyone with it, and still didn’t go off. There were a lot of people around so if it had, then quite a few could have been hurt, or worse. I made the decision to grab it, make a run for the water and throw it in.

‘You guys may want to get out the way,’ I shouted at the camera crew. I scooped up what was essentially a large bomb, and ran towards the lake holding it in my hands and my breath in my lungs. I made it to the edge of the water and threw it in.

‘What was that?’ one of the film crew asked.

‘That was a ten-inch shell,’ I replied.

‘What do you mean?’

‘That was one that didn’t go off; it came out of the sky.’

At that point both the cameraman and producer said, ‘Nope, you guys can have this job. This is rubbish, this is bullshit.’ They ran and hid inside the back of a truck and didn’t film another thing that night.

Crazy things happened sometimes simply because we were moving so fast. We were doing the Rose Festival in Benalla one year and time was running out. We were darting round like dogs with Dencorub on their dates just trying to get everything done, setting up a fireworks show right on the edge of the river. It got to the point when I only had about two more things to wire up. There was an effect called distorting that used to come in a box that you’d sit on the ground and wire to an electrical detonator. Once it went off it would shoot about 99 individual ball-bearing-sized fireworks up fifteen or twenty metres in the air and then off they’d go, firing rapidly one after the other. I had two of those to set up so I ran out and set them up on the riverbank, head down and bum up. We’d been there all day but there was just so much to do; in fact the show had already started while I was still finishing setting up the two distorting effects. I finally went over to where they were firing some of the show and then it was time for the distorting box to be fired. As it went off I watched these fireworks fly out of the box and start to bounce off the limbs of the gum tree beneath which I’d set it up. It sounds impossible but I’d had my head down in the rush and just hadn’t looked up to see what was above. The fireworks were hitting the branches and bouncing around, and the crowd was going ‘Ooh!’ ‘Aah!’ ‘Oh, wow!’ ‘Gee!’ and all the kids were cheering; it looked beautiful as this whole tree came to life. And somehow it never caught fire.

After the show finished the organisers and the Mayor said to Des Lawton, ‘That effect you did in that tree was amazing.’

‘Yeah, yeah, we’re pretty happy with that,’ he said. ‘It was a bit of an experimental thing; they’re pretty hard to come by; we’re not sure if we’ll be able to do it again.’

When John Farnham played a New Year’s Eve concert at the Myer Music Bowl one year, we had all these fireworks called airbursts attached to the truss, and a big sign saying Happy New Year at the front of the stage. The airbursts are what we call cold flame, they don’t hurt; you can fire them right beside your skin and they’re fine. But the sparks that came off the set piece that spelt Happy New Year would be hot. On the floor of the stage there was a bank of speakers, what we call foldback wedges, facing back at the singer and the musicians. We asked the organisers several times, ‘Have the foam inserts on those speakers been fireproofed?’ ‘Yep, yep, they have been,’ they kept saying. Come the countdown to midnight, John Farnham began belting out ‘It’s a Long Way to the Top’. While he did that we got ready to let off the sign saying ‘Happy New Year’. The moment arrived and the fireworks went off. All the sparks came down off the set piece and slowly started setting fire to the foam on the speakers in front of John Farnham. John started kicking into the wedges to put some of the flames out. The audience must have been pretty impressed, thinking, ‘Wow, John Farnham is rocking this song so hard,’ when in fact what he was doing was trying to put out some of the flames.

I have many good memories of piling into Des Lawton’s Ford Bronco along with Des and Steve, a trailer behind loaded with pyrotechnics, travelling country Victoria. They were good times. We’d turn up in Echuca, or Mildura, or Benalla for the Rose Festival — we’d do it all. Part of me felt like I was going back to the carnie roots of the Jacobson family, heading off to town fairs and festivals out in the bush. I’ve travelled a lot since then, but there was something special about darting across Victoria blowing stuff up.

CHAPTER TEN

MEDICINE FOR THE HEART

For some, there is a time to stop being amusing; for the Jacobsons, that time is never. There are very few circumstances where our family can’t find room for a bit of humour, which can be such good medicine for an aching heart. Humour is what my family is made for, its raison d’être, during good times and bad.

As a teenager I was once about to go on stage to do a show with the curtain ready to fly up. I was chatting to one of the other performers standing just behind me and I made a joke about cancer and death. This lovely girl said to me, ‘Shane, how dare you do that? There are people dying of cancer every day.’ Turning around, I said, ‘Yeah, I know. My stepmother just did, and this is how I choose to deal with it.’

The curtain flew up and we had to go ahead with the show then, but for a moment she looked at me as if she wanted to apologise for what she’d said without knowing my situation, and I tried to signal with my eyes that it was alright: ‘I wasn’t trying to put you in your place, but don’t assume me to be heartless.’ If I could have said anything then it would have been, ‘I know people die of cancer every day, and there seems to be so little we can do to stop it. It hurts so many people and it brings so much pain and sadness, often without a chance to fight back, and that is precisely why I am joking about it. At least I can steal a smile from this horrible situation that leaves so little to celebrate.’

I was ten when Dad’s second wife, Gloria, first became ill, though none of us knew much about that — not even Dad because she had a real aversion to doctors and kept her symptoms quiet for a good while. At first Gloria was treated by a specialist for what he thought was a problem with the nerves in the lining of her stomach. After twelve months of treatment with little improvement, Gloria was diagnosed with cancer of the stomach.

Gloria’s prognosis was not good, but because she was only in her forties her oncologist suggested that it was worth trying a course of chemotherapy. For twelve months she rode the chemo rollercoaster: knocked around with each session of treatment then rallying in between to become her usual bright self again. After the second round of treatment, she started to lose her hair. That was a real blow to her, as it is to so many people, perhaps to women most of all. Men can do the bald look okay, but it’s not so easy for women. So Gloria was fitted for a wig, and Dad recalls that when he took her to pick it up she looked quite splendid. As they walked back to his car, though, a gust of wind sprang up and swept the wig off her head and down the street. They were in the middle of crossing a busy road and, as Dad describes it in his book,

With the oncoming traffic bearing down on us I had to quickly escort her to the safety of the footpath, do an about-turn and, skilfully evading the traffic, effect a brilliant one-handed pickup of the abandoned hairpiece … When I reached the owner of the elegant hairpiece, Gloria and I just looked at each other and burst out laughing.

Charlie Chaplin once said that in times of great sorrow brief moments of humour can spring to the surface. Our family certainly believes that laughter belongs everywhere.

Even so, despite Dad’s courage in caring for Gloria and despite her strong spirit, Gloria passed away in April 1983. I remember looking at her lying in her bed just before she died and thinking, ‘Wow, there’s really not much left of the Gloria that I know.’

Gloria’s passing shook Dad to his core. Both of my parents had endured painful experiences before, but losing Gloria really took its toll on him. My brother Clay stepped up and became a true companion to Dad. The day after Gloria’s funeral, Clay, who was studying at the Swinburne Film and Television School at the time, packed his things and moved out of our home to live with Dad in his flat in Maribyrnong so he wouldn’t be sitting there of a night all on his own. So there was my brother, my roommate, my superhero, moving out just the day after we lost Gloria.

Many times since then Dad has said Clay had to grow up way too quickly at that point. He became Dad’s emotional support and helped him through that time when things could have gone quite wrong for him. Clay lived with Dad for many, many years after that; they were father and son, flatmates and confidants.

Sitting in the car as part of Gloria’s funeral procession, it struck me — perhaps for the very first time — that life can be a very serious thing indeed. Although it looks like a magical world, and in many ways it is, every now and then the carousel stops for what can be very tragic circumstances, and the ride takes a while to start up again. Right at that moment, I realised that the world can be a really cruel place.

My dad had dealt with so much in his life, everything from extreme poverty to health problems of his own, and he was a hero to me. Yet here he was: the world had taken all the wind out of his sails and cut them into pieces, then punched holes in his boat. That man sitting in the car beside me wasn’t the same man as before.

We sat with Dad at the funeral parlour, Clay holding Dad’s hand, and we went with him on to Uncle Norm’s house for the wake. Along the way, something magical did happen. Dad had stitched up his sails, patched the holes in his hull and was sailing again, and within hours he was cracking jokes, smiling and laughing, working hard at the funeral of his wife to make everyone else feel good.

Of course Dad was still torn apart on the inside. He went on to grieve a great deal in private, but standing in my Uncle Norm’s kitchen I watched him entertain that room full of family and friends. I couldn’t help but admire him. He was amazing.

Even today, Dad is as much a superhero to me as he was when I was a kid. Having watched him face more tragedy than any person should, I know only too well that he is made of strong stuff. In 2009 his beloved wife Lorraine fell ill and was admitted to hospital. One thing led to another and she never came out. They had been together for twenty years after meeting on the dance floor. Dad wrote a poem that captured the evening they met:

Sweet Lorraine

She gracefully glided around the floor

A vision of softness that menfolk adore

Leaning ever so gently back

With flashing eyes and hair jet black

Then she passed on by and was lost for a while

But a fleeting glance and I caught her smile

So at once I knew I would meet her again

That night when I first saw my Sweet Lorraine

Once again Dad took a knockout blow in the ring of life, and once again he found the strength to pick himself off the canvas and come back fighting, full of life and funny as ever.

Not only can he drag a laugh out of anything, my dad is also a survivor. Out of six boys in his family, he is the last surviving male sibling, since we buried Dad’s brother Norm not so long ago. Mum has buried all but one of her brothers — Les — and all her sisters too — having just laid to rest her sister and my godmother, dear Aunty Wendy — and because of this our family understands very well the reality that life isn’t forever. Some would say the end comes way too quick for everyone, though if you’ve suffered through a long illness there can come a time when you welcome the end.

When Dad was with Lorraine, they used to holiday down at Barwon Heads every year, on the coast near Ocean Grove, not far from where we would camp as kids with Mum and Dave. Dad and Lorraine would stay there in the very caravan that we used as Kenny’s father’s caravan in Kenny. When we were filming, the caravan had an aluminium annex on the side, but before that Dad had a canvas annex that I would help him put up at the beginning of each summer.

Not long before Christmas 1999, Dad was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus, and he had to have a very serious operation. As I have often said, if they find cancer in the letterbox, they take out the whole front garden. Dad was fairly convinced there was a very big chance he might not survive it. ‘We should go and set up that annex before I go into hospital,’ he said to me. ‘If anything happens to me, I still want Lorraine to have somewhere to go at Christmas.’

We headed down to Barwon Heads, and as we drove along, Dad was talking quite fatalistically about his potential end. While he spoke about the operation and what the outcome might be, I was thinking, ‘I just don’t feel it in my bones that you’re going to die.’ I’m quite optimistic and I don’t think that’s a bad thing in life. But I also understand that I’m not a surgeon, so the outcome of Dad’s surgery was not in my hands.

I said something of the sort to Dad, that I didn’t feel that he was about to die. ‘Well, Dad, you know it might not be the end.’

‘Why are you being so optimistic about this?’ he asked me, perhaps a little irritated that I wasn’t grasping the harsh realities of the situation.

‘Here’s the thing,’ I said to him. ‘We’ve got two weeks before the operation. If you are in fact going to die in two weeks’ time, I want to enjoy the next two weeks. If you’re right, I’ve only got two weeks left with you, and I don’t want to spend that time thinking you’re about to die. Because if that’s going to happen, I’ve got the rest of my life to deal with what that feels like, so I’d prefer to live as though it’s going to be fine. And if you’re not going to die, then why on earth would I want to spend two weeks feeling what it would be like to know you’re going to die only to find out you don’t?’

There was a pause as Dad digested this.

‘So if you do die in two weeks,’ I said, ‘and you’ve convinced me to feel bad about it for those two weeks, I’m off you. And if you’re not going to die but you convince me for the next two weeks that you are, I’m off you. Either way, that approach doesn’t work for me.’

Dad just looked sideways at me and said, ‘Why do you view the world differently to most of us?’

‘I imagine it’s because I’m the third.’

‘Why would that make a difference?’

‘When Clay was young and he fell over, did you rush over to him and say, “I’ve got you, mate, you’ll be right”?’

‘I guess so.’

‘And when Kim fell over, did you rush over and pick her up? Because even though she was the second child, she was a girl?’

‘Well, yes, I guess we did.’

‘But by the time I came along, when I fell over did you yell from a distance, “She’ll be right, mate, up you get”?’

‘I guess we did.’

‘I expect to have to do it myself,’ I said. ‘By the same token, I have the freedom of having a lot of people around me to help out if it goes wrong. I’m blessed with a great support network, but I also expect to have to get up on my own and get on with it.’

The great news is that Dad didn’t die from the operation; by Christmas time he was recovering in intensive care. The following Christmas I gave him a card that he still has and knows off by heart. In it I wrote, ‘Have a great Christmas, Dad. I hope you enjoy your gift. I’m still enjoying the gift I got last year, the gift of your life.’ Dad tells me quite often how much he loves that card, but he couldn’t love it as much as I love the truth that’s in it: I still have a dad.

Dad will always be the life of any party, but Mum can be pretty bloody hilarious too, and at her own expense. Everyone who knows Mum appreciates that in the face of calamity, levity is her weapon of choice. Back in 2002 Mum was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, yet almost from the beginning she was making jokes about it all the time. I think it’s a stunning quality. That’s something you can’t buy; you certainly can’t hand it to someone.

Mum has always had the energy of an athlete and the endurance of a soldier, so Parkinson’s came as a total shock. She was concerned about a tremor in her hands and noticed she was shuffling a little as she walked, so she paid a visit to a neurologist. When she broke the news to us that she had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s, I couldn’t help thinking, ‘She’s beaten anything and everything before, but this is the disease that knocked the fight out of Muhammad Ali.’

For four days the news weighed heavily on us. Then finally I said to Mum, ‘I’ve decided that we should have a party. We should celebrate life, not mourn the way it’s going to change.’

I’d chosen the music, I told her: ‘We’re going to play Shakin’ Stevens and Elvis Presley singing “All Shook Up” … It’ll be a cocktail party and you’re going to shake the martinis.’

Before I could keep going, Mum said, ‘Really, is that all I get? Four days of love and pity before the jokes start, is that it?’

‘Yes, Mum, that’s all you get.’

‘Oh well,’ she sighed, ‘it was fun while it lasted.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

BURNING ON THE INSIDE

I love that scene in Wizard of Oz when Toto tugs back the curtain to reveal the Wizard pulling levers and pushing buttons on an elaborate machine that controls all the special effects. The engine and all of its moving parts under the hood of the car of life fascinate me.

Being on stage with Gang Show fuelled my passion to perform, but, as I’ve mentioned, I was equally intrigued by what happened backstage. All of it fascinated me: the lighting, the sound, the staging, all the props, the flies they used to move scenery around. I asked a lot of questions and my interest must have been pretty obvious; when a show was being put into a theatre — which is called the bump-in — when I wasn’t busy rehearsing I would often stay around and help set up the lighting. In Gang Show anyone willing to help was welcomed with open arms; when a performance was coming up it was all hands on deck to make props and do all the other zillion and one tasks that go into making a great show.

Andrew Holmes, the lighting director for Gang Show, also owned a lighting company with his business partner, Bob Prosser. When I was getting ready to go to Sweden to be with Annika, Andrew and Bob heard that I would be passing through London on my travels. They asked if I would take a look around an international entertainment lighting trade show that was being held in Earls Court in London. They gave me a Premier Lighting shirt and printed some business cards with my name on them and said, ‘You can say you’re one of our representatives. Just take a look at the expo and send us back any interesting information you can lay your hands on.’

When Annika and I got to London during our backpacking trip, I spent two or three days walking around the trade show, collecting brochures and information. I put them all in a big post pack and sent them back to Australia, then we continued our travels through Europe.

When I got back to Australia, at the same time I was working at French Knickers theatre restaurant, I was spending time with the guys from Premier, talking them through all the information I had sent them from the lighting expo in London. At the end of it they said, ‘How would you like to work with us as a sales rep?’

The deal was that I would work on commission only. I could work as many days as I wanted to: one day a month, one day a year, every day, but whatever lighting products I sold, I’d get 50 per cent of the net profit. That suited me fine. To kick things off Premier paid me $1000 for the time I’d spent at the trade show in London. With that money I bought a little old Mazda from a friend, which became known as my company car. For a laugh, the guys got a Premier Lighting stencil and some spray paint and put the company name on the boot, and I would get around in this coughing and spluttering automobile — that I have to admit started every time I turned the key, much to my daily surprise — with the company name branded on its hide.

Most weeks I went in to Premier five days a week. I’d been selling a bit of stuff, so after a few months Andrew and Bob said, ‘Look, if you want you can set up a desk space or an office here.’ So one weekend I did just that. After the factory shut around midday on Saturday, I started singlehandedly setting up my office. At Premier there was an upstairs area full of metal cupboards and old service parts, so I cleared that space out. Then I borrowed one of Premier’s vans and drove around town, picking up carpet and furniture and fabric. Mum and David were renovating the lounge room at our home in Avondale Heights so they were ripping up the carpet, and they had an old coffee table they wanted to get rid of. A friend had some old couches he didn’t need anymore; someone else offered me a desk. I gaffer-taped a broom to the up/down lever on the forklift, loaded the furniture on, rode up to the second floor with each load (not a safe work practice, I do confess), then dragged the furniture off. I put carpet down and hung up some fabric for curtains. I spent the entire weekend setting it all up, and by the time everyone came in on Monday morning I’d built myself an office, complete with a desk, sofas, carpet and curtains. Andrew and Bob came up the stairs, took one look and said, ‘Wow, there’s an office here.’

First up I was called the Melbourne sales rep for Premier, then within a few months they started calling me the Victorian Sales Manager. When I’d been there a couple of years, I was selling enough stuff that Bob and Andrew said, ‘Rather than us paying you bits of commission here and there, it might actually work better if you work for us full time.’ Not long after that they made me National Sales Manager.

At the same time, I also started doing lighting for shows. Graham Crawford, the friend and mentor who gave me advice about dealing with the allegedly sleepy lighting operator, was one of the first managers at Premier and had done lighting for Gang Show and for film and television with the ABC. Graham taught me a great deal about lighting and he dobbed me in to be lighting director for an amateur production of Li’l Abner.

So I lit that show and from that point on I would go out and set up other shows, then gradually I started doing lighting design for them as well. I continued to sell equipment for Premier on weekdays and many weekends, and I started helping them restructure the business in Melbourne. Before I knew it I became Victorian State Manager as well as National Sales Manager. Premier operated in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane, so when it came time to restructure the operation in Queensland I flew up to Brisbane to do that. Years went on and the Queensland Manager left, so once again I went up to Brisbane and ran the branch for three months then hired a new manager, Craig Ryder, who to this day is still a very close mate of mine. By now I was Queensland adviser, Victorian State Manager and National Sales Manager.

Things kept growing. Some time later the New South Wales State Manager, who ran major parts of the company, left. In a meeting I asked Bob and Andrew, ‘So who are you going to get to run that office?’

‘We’re not going to replace him as such,’ they told me. ‘We’re just going to get you to run everything.’

I never went out of my way to get all these jobs but at the age of 26 I was National General Manager of Premier. Andrew and Bob gave me an incredible amount of freedom to make decisions — and mistakes at times. Never was I penalised harshly for any of those mistakes, even though some of them cost the company money. Their view was that this was the best management course I could do. And it was — far better than if I’d stayed with my accounting and law course.

One very special thing that happened in my life during these hectic times was meeting Kellie, a bright, bubbly woman who worked at Premier. Kellie and I became a couple, and later parents to a gorgeous son.

Through everything else that was happening in my life, and even though I was pretty busy running Premier, I was still doing some acting and a little bit of comedy, a TV commercial here and a radio spot there. Janet, the wife of one of the Premier bosses, used to get me to record funny answering-machine messages for her. I would invent characters so that if you went to her message bank you’d hear these crazy messages from different people. Every now and then she’d come down and say, ‘It’s time for something new on my voicemail.’

Gold 104.3 radio station in Melbourne ran a competition for the craziest answering-machine message. Unbeknown to me, one of Janet’s friends called them and said, ‘You should ring this girl’s number, she’s got a great one.’ What they heard was me as the character Sergio, a gay Spanish beautician, who was doing some facial work on Janet which was going horribly wrong. On this message, I (as Sergio) explained that I used the wrong materials for the mud mask I put on Janet’s face and it had set hard, all the while hitting a ruler on a coffee cup to make it sound like I was trying to chip the mask off while Janet squealed in the background.

The on-air hosts thought it was hilarious. They spoke to Janet and said, ‘That was fantastic. Who did that?’

‘One of the staff here at Premier,’ she told them.

They got on the phone to me and asked me if I’d like to come in and have a chat, so I went in and met with the station programmer and some other people from the radio station. They said to me, ‘There’s a segment we have each Friday called the Sixty Minute Challenge, which we’d love you to host. And we’d love to have access to that character Sergio you created.’

That was my radio apprenticeship. Every Friday morning I would get up at five a.m. and go in to Gold 104.3 to host the segment. I’d announce what the challenge was that week: it might be to climb the stairs of the Rialto Tower in 60 minutes, buy and eat $100 worth of food in 60 minutes, or door-knock houses at seven a.m. and convince someone to let you have a shower — again within a 60-minute time limit. We’d get a volunteer and off we’d go. Then at nine a.m. I’d go in to Premier to start my day’s work there.

Thanks to Janet and her answering machine, Sergio developed a career of his own on Gold 104.3 too. Every odd week or so the on-air team would ring to talk about something happening at the time: the Melbourne Cup, or the Queen visiting Australia, or a band coming to town. I’d stand in the kitchen at my then girlfriend Penny’s house with the hair dryer going, and I’d whack spoons against the edge of cups and click scissors next to the phone so it sounded as though I was calling in from a busy hairdressing salon. Sergio would provide a social commentary on the events of the day; the thing was he was a bit of a goose, so he got the wrong end of the stick most times, and because English was his second language he misunderstood quite a lot of what the radio hosts were saying. Sergio always meant well, even when he got things wrong; he was good fun, an adorable character. People warmed to him, but no one really knew it was me.

It was around that time I got my truck licence. Collecting licences has always given me a kick. As a teenager I often borrowed my friends’ motorbikes, then I figured I had better get a licence instead of riding them illegally, so I went and got a motorbike licence. I got my car licence as everyone does. Every now and then at Premier I’d have to use a forklift, so I thought I’d better get a licence for that. I used to drive trucks so I got my rigid and articulated truck licence. Later on I’d be working at heights in venues all over Melbourne and across Australia, places like the Tennis Centre and the Glasshouse (now known as the Westpac Centre) and Festival Hall. So I got a scissor-lift licence and a boom-lift licence, and in the end I got my boat and jet-ski licences so I could play on water as well.

I was still doing a bit of site management, too. Friends of mine had a company called Gig Power that provided crew for every major gig in Victoria, and I helped them out with gigs on many occasions. And, of course, running Premier amongst it all. My life just became a constant series of shows: rock ’n’ roll shows, theatre shows, radio shows and live festivals. Fortunately I am one of those people, as my dad puts it, who can keep running even when the tank is empty.

Some of those shows did give me an opportunity to meet some remarkable people along the way: wild roadies, riggers, truck drivers and mad rock bands. But one of my fondest memories, even though it is a sad one, came out of an unfortunate circumstance in 1995, when Premier had a bunch of equipment on hire at a film studio in Melbourne. There was a fire and the studio burnt down, and along with it went a load of equipment that was owned by one of the lighting gaffers. That equipment represented his living and his only way to support his family, so a few people in the industry decided to do a celebrity auction to raise money for the family. Celebrities donated items to be auctioned off and I was asked to emcee and help run the event.

Some actresses and actors turned up to help support this little fundraiser, and Maurie Fields was there with his wife, the wonderful Val Jellay. I’d always been a fan of Maurie’s work, and many years earlier he had been one of the first celebrities I had appeared with on TV, cracking that line about being poisoned by a soft drink. I’d watched Maurie Fields and Shane Bourne tell jokes on Hey Hey It’s Saturday and I adored them both as joke-tellers and raconteurs.

Here I was hosting a gig, albeit a small fundraiser, in a pub in front of Maurie Fields and Val Jellay. I got a chance to sit down with them and have a beer or two with Maurie. After a little while Maurie said, ‘Well, it’s time for us to head off now, son,’ and I said, ‘It’s been an honour to have a beer with you, Maurie.’ Val had written a book that had just been released called Stagestruck, and they both signed a copy and gave it to me. That evening as I left the pub, I put the book on the front seat of my car and I sat there for a moment, just so stoked that I got to have a chat and a beer with Maurie Fields.

The very next day as I was driving my car, still with the book that Maurie had signed sitting on the passenger’s seat beside me, the news came on the radio that Maurie Fields had died overnight. I was completely shell-shocked. I looked across at that book, in which the ink was not long dry on the autograph he gave me. What a tragic loss that was for his family and the Australian entertainment industry. I was devastated but eventually I couldn’t help but think how fortunate I was to have had the chance to sit with Maurie Fields and have that beer.

One of the gigs we got at Premier was to set up the lighting each week for Live and Kicking, Channel 7’s new AFL footy show in the late 1990s. For its first year Live and Kicking was broadcast live out of the old Emerald Theatre, which has since burnt to the ground in questionable circumstances. One week Steve Dundon, a buddy of mine who was a producer on the show, said to me in passing, ‘Our warm-up guy can’t make it today.’

‘I can do it for you if you want me to,’ I said.

‘Do you want to have a go?’ he asked me.

‘Yeah, why not? I reckon I can do it.’

When a live audience goes into a television studio, the warm-up person brings them in, sits them down, tells them a few jokes, lets them know where the monitors are, when to laugh and clap, when not to laugh and clap. They warm the audience up, get them laughing and moving so that when the show begins, they’re feeling good and ready to respond. During the show the warm-up guy reminds the audience when to clap and where to look, and during the ad breaks he keeps them entertained, so every time you come back out of a break they’re upbeat and bubbly. Essentially it’s live stand-up comedy but working with an audience in a television studio, though on top of that you have to manage the crowd as well as entertain them and make them laugh.

As I found out later, after we had this conversation Steve walked over to one of the guys in my lighting crew and said, ‘Do you think Shane can do the warm-ups?’

‘Absolutely,’ the lighting guy said. ‘I reckon he’d do it no worries at all.’

That night, after I finished setting up the lighting, I went out the front in a Live and Kicking T-shirt and did the warm-up for the crowd. The executive producer, Harvey Silver, came over to me afterwards and said, ‘Would you do this for the show every week?’

With warm-up, I had found a new format for my comedy. Ad-lib comedy can be terrifying, but warm-up took the fear out of it. It was the best possible master class in stand-up comedy: anything that didn’t work one week I simply didn’t do the next. For their part, the crowd had no expectations: they had come to see a TV show and I was just the guy before the show and during the ad breaks. For my part, every week a crowd was delivered to me to entertain, well before I was famous enough to have people paying to see me. In my mind they were my audience and that’s how I treated them, even though they were there for something else.

I had walked out in front of a crowd many times before, so any fear I might once have had about that was gone, and that meant I could just get on with having a conversation. I learned quickly that a crowd of people can become one person. When you walk out in front of an audience, treat them as one person and you can have a conversation, just as you would if you were talking with a mate over a beer. The way I saw it was that we were meeting each other for the first time and getting to know each other.

For two years I did warm-up for Live and Kicking. I went on to work on other shows on Channel 7 as well as Foxtel and other networks for about five more years. By this stage I knew a lot about how theatre works and the backstage operations there, and I had lighting well and truly licked, but this gave me an insight into the intricate details of how a television studio worked. While I was talking to the audience I wore an earpiece, so I could hear the floor manager and the cameraman and the director talking in my ear about completely different things. Not only did I get used to having to talk while other conversations were going on in my ear, I got to learn a lot about their jobs and how a show came together. It felt like my first chance to be in the engine room of live television. I loved the urgency and immediacy of it all, the adrenaline rush of coming straight out of an ad break and being live to air.

I wouldn’t know who was going to be on the show until about four o’clock that same afternoon. I’d get a running sheet faxed through to my office at Premier listing who was coming on and what the segments would be. Peter Brock came on one week, Mick Doohan was a guest another time; we had every football legend you could think of as well as singing greats, sporting stars and legends of every description.

One day I looked at the running sheet and written on there was the name George Foreman. This was the boxer who was two-time World Heavyweight Champion, who went toe to toe with Muhammad Ali in a legendary fight called the Rumble in the Jungle, the guy who was rated as one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time. ‘Big George’ they called him. And I had a chance of meeting him that day.

By now the show was being filmed out of the Channel Seven studios in Melbourne instead of the Emerald Theatre. Merv Ford was the floor manager, a fantastic guy who many people know from the show Tonight Live with Steve Vizard. Merv knew I was very keen on boxing and that Dad ran a boxing gym. I’d met Aussie Joe Bugner on the show before, a great heavyweight boxer from the 1970s, and that was pretty good. But George Foreman? This was like meeting God.

Before the show Merv called out to me, ‘Shane, can you come over here?’ Standing with him was George Foreman. Merv said to him, ‘There’s someone who wants to meet you.’ I’d met quite a few stars at this point so I was generally pretty good at keeping it together. I went over intending to say to George Foreman, ‘It’s an honour and a pleasure.’ What came out of my mouth was ‘Ohmnomna ble on pleszoolub.’ I just couldn’t speak. My brain was telling me that words were coming out of my mouth but my ears were telling me that I was talking gibberish.

Immediately George Foreman put his big hands on my shoulders and slowly pulled me towards him. ‘It’s okay,’ he said to me in a deep, beautiful voice. As I heard this calming voice I just thought, ‘Oh, thank goodness, I’m being comforted,’ and I slowly leaned my head into his shoulder, like a baby being held. Then I realised that the person I was leaning on for comfort was the very person who was sending me gaga, but I just couldn’t help it. It was as if I was no longer in control of myself.

I managed to pull myself together sufficiently to ask for his autograph and he signed the back of my running sheet, which I’ve still got to this very day. Then Merv said to me, ‘Hey, we’re thinking that when George comes out into the crowd before the show starts, we’d love for you to say, “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Heavyweight Champion of the World!”’ So I got to do the call that the ring announcer at a boxing match would do in that over-the-top style: ‘Champion of the Wooooorld, George Foreman!’ After I’d done that, George Foreman ran into the studio; then he pointed at me and winked before he went into the crowd.

I was completely blown away by that moment. I had to run outside and ring Dad to tell him because boxing was his life. ‘You’re not going to believe what I just did,’ I told him, and we both agreed it was like meeting God, or at least God’s son, who is also very famous.

TV shows don’t always run smoothly, though. One time I did warm-up for a game show that was a new format and there were technical problems: the delightful host, UK star Denise van Outen, had a wardrobe malfunction and things just weren’t going well that day. They kept having to stop filming then start again. That day, I ended up standing in front of a crowd doing ad-lib comedy for three and a half hours. That’s when you truly earn your money.

That experience gave me all the confidence I needed to work a live room. I still love getting up and emcee-ing a live gig. I’ve been master of ceremonies at the AFI Awards (now known as the AACTAs), I’ve presented awards at the Logies and the Helpmann Awards, I’ve been MC or guest speaker at hundreds of major corporate events. Those warm-up days honed my ability to get up and talk to a crowd for a long period of time, and I learned to just take my time and entertain. I wasn’t great at it when I started but by the end of it I sure had learned a lot.

I never had anything scripted; I’d have a few jokes prepared each week and a supply of gags to draw on, but I never knew what I was going to say to the crowd and what they were going to say back. That’s where I learned to listen to a crowd, to hear their story and fire a response back. They do the same in return and there you have it, the tennis match of comedy, one conversation bouncing back and forth across a live room.

My corporate comedy career had started to take off by then too. I would go into gigs pretending to be an American sporting psychologist or a visiting writer of great literature. At lavish corporate functions I’d be introduced as the guest speaker for the evening. It was what we call character immersion work: I’d invent a character and set up an amazing bio for them that the MC would read out before I came out to speak to a crowd of supposed experts in their field, and the only people that would know I wasn’t what I claimed was the person who booked me and the boss of the company. And me. I’d speak for half an hour or so and make a mockery of their world, and at the end I’d finish by saying, ‘Thank you for having me — but then again, I think you’re the ones who have been had.’

I was doing well, no doubt about it: the company car and the big job title said it all. But one day it struck me that something wasn’t right: I wasn’t giving anything back to the community. At this stage I was still single, no kids, and I felt that I was reaping plenty but planting very little. Scouting was no longer part of my life, but having had that in my background, it didn’t sit well with me that I was busy taking from the world and not giving anything back.

Premier Lighting had expanded to become the Premier Technology Group, supplying all sorts of equipment for events, such as lighting, sound systems, staging, projectors, drapes and decorations, the works. Charities would often get in touch with us and say, ‘We want to hold a cocktail party as a fundraiser for our charity; can you organise crew and lighting and sound?’ They were all worthwhile charities, but it would always go like this. We would turn up with trucks full of gear; we would pay our staff their wages, but I wouldn’t charge full money myself to be there, and our company would make no money out of it. For a big event you bump in at six in the morning and stay there all that day and through the night. When the show finishes, the guests all climb into cabs, giggling and a bit drunk, and the person that ran the event stands there on the front steps holding a glass of champagne, a bit tipsy, waving them off and saying, ‘We’ve all made a difference.’ Then the organiser gets in a cab and goes home and you’re left there to pack the whole gig up and load the truck, sober as judges because you have to drive the truck home, arriving at five the following morning. At some point through the evening, when they have the speeches thanking everyone, they say, ‘We want to thank Shane and the gang at Premier, they’ve been wonderful,’ and people clap for eight seconds and then continue to get drunk and forget all about it.

I talked to a lot of the crew from other companies that supplied rigging and sound gear and staging, and we all agreed how sick and tired we were of doing these events. So I said, ‘How about we hold one event a year for the charity that we choose, and we provide all the equipment, and whenever someone rings us and says, “We want you to help our charity,” we say, “We’ve got our own charity. Would you like to help us?”’ When people ring asking you to support their charity and you ask them to support yours instead, they hang up pretty quick.

It wasn’t that we didn’t want to help charities out, we just wanted to be the ones to choose the charity that the money and effort went to. One of my friends, Cam, went out with a girl called Kate who worked for the Pratt family, and they are wonderful at feeding money to charities and supporting the arts very strongly. Kate’s job for the Pratt family was to research charities and find out which ones were doing good work but needed a little bit of help with funding. I spoke to her and said, ‘What are some good children’s charities?’

‘I’ll give you three,’ Kate said. ‘Find the one that best suits you.’

That’s what we did. Kate gave me three names, I picked one that seemed like a good candidate and set up a meeting with them. I met with the manager of this charity and explained the idea we had of putting on a massive concert somewhere like the Myer Music Bowl with all the proceeds going to their charity. It would be a rock concert, I explained: we had access to rock bands and the music industry so we could open the backstage door to that world, so to speak, and put on a very special concert for their organisation. The manager listened to me outline the whole idea. When I’d finished she said, ‘You sound like a gift too good to be true, but as wonderful as it is, I don’t think it quite suits our charity. We work with very young children, and a concert of that sort, with rock music — well, the children we work with are too young.’

Back to my list I went. The second name on my piece of paper was Mirabel, a charity that looks after children and teenagers who are orphaned or abandoned as a result of their parents’ illicit drug use. Kate agreed with me that Mirabel might be better suited for this idea, so I went to meet a lady called Jane Rowe, the founder of Mirabel. Jane is quietly spoken, a tiny, seemingly frail woman, who has more internal toughness and steely composure than anyone I’ve ever come across. That woman has heard so many heart-wrenching stories about the damage done to children through drug and alcohol addiction, enough to be a burden on a lesser person, yet she takes those stories and she makes a difference.

I sat in Jane Rowe’s office and we had a good long talk. She asked all about how I came to choose her charity and what made me think of the concert, and I chatted with her about how, like a lot of people in the business, I was sick of being asked to do all these things for charity but not really getting any joy out of it, so we had decided to pick a charity ourselves to support.

After we had chatted for about an hour, Jane said, ‘That all sounds wonderful, Shane, but what you’re proposing sounds like what you already do for a job. You want to give the world something more of yourself, but if you run a concert for us — well, that’s what you do every day. The thing is, I’ve been looking for someone to help start respite camps for the kids here and I think you’d be perfect. You’re exactly the person we’re looking for.’

I walked into Jane Rowe’s office offering to put on a big fundraising concert, and before I knew it, I was walking out having agreed to be a volunteer for Mirabel. I wouldn’t be running any concert extravaganzas, though in times to come I helped out with smaller events and Christmas parties for them, plus an event called Music, Mirth and Mayhem that was part of the Melbourne Comedy Festival every year. But mostly I helped set up these respite camps for the kids from Mirabel. When I started going on camps with the kids, we would borrow a bus to do it. Then Pat Rafter wonderfully and very generously purchased a bus for Mirabel, so we used that bus to get the kids around.

That was the very start of my journey with them, back in the late 1990s. I’m proud to say that Mirabel is still travelling well and the respite camps I helped set up all those years ago are still going strong throughout Victoria and now New South Wales as well. There are people employed to run that part of the business and hundreds of children enjoy those camps each year. My dream is that one day the charity will no longer be required, but I think I have more chance of growing a blue rose.

Premier was going very well and now I was doing a bit for the world at the same time through that work with Mirabel, so that all felt good. But there was still something else burning inside me.

My brother, Clayton, again nudged me, saying, ‘When are you going to stop doing lighting and get on with your acting? All this lighting work is great, and the little bits of comedy you do here and there, but when are you going to get out there and really start performing?’

‘Yeah, yeah, I know,’ I said to him, because I knew he was right. Yet somehow I was never overly concerned. I still had that burning desire to make a living as a performer, so I knew I hadn’t given up on myself. But the reality was that I was fully employed with Premier and extremely busy there, let alone with everything else I was doing. I told myself that my work with Premier was providing an income so I could pay the bills, which, as we all know, is a necessary part of life.

Then one day I was driving to a meeting with a guy called Richard Price, who helped me set up the respite camps for Mirabel. He was engaged by a bunch of charities as an outdoor educational worker, and he had some problems to solve with a few charity entertainment events involving some sponsorship and promotional requirements. ‘Come past Port Melbourne in the next couple of weeks and I’ll introduce you to a few people who I think might be able to help with some of those problems for you,’ I said to him.

It was only a five-minute drive from Premier to this meeting; but while we were heading there Richard asked me, ‘How’s your company going? How’s Premier?’

‘Oh, it’s not my company, I don’t own it,’ I replied. ‘I work for the owners and I just help them run it.’

‘Oh, I always thought you owned it.’

‘No, I’d have to be worth millions of dollars to own it.’

‘Oh right — well, it’s obviously your dream to do it. I hear you talk about it with such passion. It must be great to be fulfilling your dream.’

‘It’s not my dream,’ I said.

‘Really? What is your dream, then?’ he asked me.

‘My dream has always been to act.’

‘You do a bit of that, don’t you?’

‘I do, but my dream isn’t to do a bit of it, my dream is to do a lot of it — and only it. But things have got fairly busy at Premier now that I’m National General Manager.’

‘It must be comforting to know that you’ve got job security,’ he replied.

‘I’ve never really worried about job security,’ I told him. ‘I’ve always thought it was very important to make sure you complete every job to the best of your ability, and always gather all the skills you can so that you are constantly employable. But I never worry about losing a job I’m in because I’ve always thought I’ve worked hard enough that I would never need to worry about finding something else.’

‘Well, I guess it’s nice to know that there’s money coming in each week,’ Richard said.

‘You know, I’ve never really worried about the money coming in each week. I do worry about paying bills, no different from most people, but I haven’t ever worried that there would never be money there. I’ve always known that money will find me if I keep working hard enough.’

With that we arrived at our meeting. Just before we got out of the car, though, I did say to him, ‘Even though it has never been my dream to do all this, it is what I’m doing, and I do enjoy it.’

We went in and had a great meeting; for an hour and a half we discussed all sorts of things and found some creative ways to help Richard out. As we walked back out to the parking lot, Richard said, ‘You know, it’s true you’ll never have to worry about landing on your feet. You were great in that meeting; it was interesting to see the business side of you in action.’

‘What do you mean?’ I asked him.

‘Those people seemed to like you and trust you, and they seemed to very much enjoy the way you do business. So I reckon you would always land on your feet, just in case you ever had any worries about following your dream.’

‘As a matter of fact,’ I said, ‘I’m about to resign as National General Manager of Premier in order to follow that dream.’

‘Wow, I wasn’t aware of that. You didn’t tell me that on the way here.’

‘No, I didn’t tell you that because I’ve just decided now that I’m going to go in tomorrow and resign. Because you’ve reminded me — more than that, you’ve made me say it out loud — I’m not following my dream. So tomorrow I’m resigning.’

And I did. The very next day I walked into Bob’s office and told him and Andrew that I wanted to resign as National General Manager.

‘Why? What’s wrong?’ Bob asked me.

‘Nothing’s wrong; that’s not the reason I’m leaving,’ I said.

We had a very long chat and towards the end Bob said, ‘It would be a real pity to lose you because we’ve become quite a family.’

Bob is a father of two sons, so I explained it to him this way. ‘I want you to think of this as a father instead of as the manager of a company that’s about to lose me. Imagine one of your sons wanted to be a builder and was learning all about building from a guy who had a piece of land next door to your house. You watched your son work with this guy building a house and gathering skills, just like the skills in life you and Andrew have given me the opportunity to learn here. Imagine you watched your son help your neighbour build a good house. Would there come a day when you would tap your son on the shoulder and say, “I think you’ve done enough to help build that man’s house. Now it’s time to build your own house on your own block of land”?’

‘Yes, there would,’ Bob said.

‘It’s time for me to go and build my own house now, Bob, but thank you for all the training.’

I knew it would be easier for Bob to understand what I was doing if he thought of it as a father rather than a managing director. It wasn’t that I was running from something, I was running to something — my dream, which I’d been distracted from for so long.

Both Bob and Andrew agreed that it would be good for everyone if I went part time at Premier, and spent the rest of my time trying to get my acting career going. So that’s what I did. I concentrated on doing more comedy and Bob and Andrew got me to start up a little division at Premier called Premier Production Services to look after some key clients and major events.

Within a year I got so busy with that little department, I found myself back in at Premier five days a week. It didn’t take too long before I was once again working five, sometimes six, sometimes seven days a week. Once again, my dream had got shelved. And I knew it too. There was always a voice inside me that said, ‘This is not what I’m supposed to be doing.’ Every time I got bumped off that highway and ended up down a dirt track, I could feel I was heading in the wrong direction. Once again, I had swerved off course out of curiosity to see the view up a side road, driving on to see what would happen if I went just a little bit further.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE BLOKE IN THE OVERALLS

Plenty has been written and said about how Clay and I came to make a film about a portaloo plumber called Kenny, so at first I was hesitant to write too much about it here. But one thing I have discovered is that people don’t know the details. The more I think people know, the more I find they know less than I imagined. So stay with me here, because I am about to tell you the stuff you don’t know.

While I was doing my level best to explore all of the back roads of life, I didn’t realise the route I had chosen was leading me towards a rest stop that would change everything.

Now that I had stepped away from the big role at Premier but was working just as hard as head of Premier Production Services, I would often site-manage and production-manage events. One of the events I worked on for many years was the Molly Bloom St Patrick’s Day Festival in Melbourne. Each time it ran, thousands more people would come, so the event got bigger and bigger, year after year.

For a festival like that, as an event manager you know there are going to be bands, and therefore you need to book a stage. When you have the stage you need lighting, sound, generators, fencing to put around the area, and security to keep things safe. Quite often at these events you have to get food tents, and where there’s food there’s drink, and sometimes where there’s drink there’s also alcohol.

If you’re going to have food and drink and a whole lot of people, then the other thing you will need to have is toilets.

The first time I ran the Molly Bloom Festival, back in the early 2000s, I used a company called Splashdown Toilets, and that was when I first met Glenn Preusker, who was then, and still is, the owner of Splashdown. With Glenn, what you see is what you get: his honesty and generosity are qualities I admire deeply. He has moved from being someone I used as a contractor to the investor when we came to make Kenny to a friend. Glenn is a keen businessman — and a keen fisherman and Bulldogs supporter too. He enjoys the outdoors and walks on the beach … hang on, this isn’t a dating show. Back to the story.

Splashdown always did a great job of supplying good, clean toilets, so I started using them for other events too. I think anyone — especially women — would agree that toilets can make or break an event. Because guys stand up to urinate, the process is quicker. Even if they have to line up, the queue usually moves along pretty smartly. It rarely goes as well for the females. You never hear women say, ‘It was amazing — there were so many toilets to choose from, all of them were clean, and I didn’t have to wait a single minute.’

The standard of toilet at outdoor events had long been a problem. Back in the rock ’n’ roll days of the eighties and nineties, toilets were an afterthought rather than a basic requirement. But Splashdown went against the grain. Not only did they provide really good toilets, they offered really good service. They were janitors, some of their staff also had plumbing skills, and they were there to tackle the thankless task of keeping the toilets in tip-top shape and making sure everything was working. But they cared about more than just the toilets. That became obvious to me one year at the Molly Bloom Festival. As the day moved on and things got a bit hectic, a girl in the crowd hurt her food, something involving broken glass. I had to try to get her through the crowd to a medic, who was waiting for us at the medical tent out the back. The accident happened up near the stage and there were band members and sound guys and lighting technicians all around us, all of them good people, but the first ones to volunteer to help me carry this girl were the Splashdown workers. They turned up seemingly out of nowhere and before you knew it we had the girl cradled between us and carried her through the crowd.

Bit by bit I started paying more and more attention to the Splashdown workers, watching what they did and how they did it. That was how I came to hear the exchange one woman had with a Splashdown crew member. After coming out of a portaloo pretty quickly, she went over to him and she said, ‘I’ve just been to that toilet and it smells disgusting in there and it’s your fault.’ I was standing within earshot and I stopped what I was doing to hear what he would say.

‘Well, I’ve got a couple of things to say about that,’ he told her. ‘Firstly, it was a female toilet — so well done, you picked the right one — but I’m a man, I don’t use those ones. Secondly, seeing as not too many other people have been in there, if you’ve just been in there and it stinks, there’s a chance it has more to do with you than it does me.’

He finished off by saying, ‘I’ve got to be honest: I’m in charge of transport, not manufacture.’

I remember thinking, ‘I’m not sure I want them to be talking to the clients like that.’ But he was right and I couldn’t help but laugh. The woman stormed off, but it gave me the giggles.

On the way home from one of our events I dropped into Clayton’s office and relayed a couple of stories from my day with the boys from Splashdown. Clay found it very funny, but more than just making him laugh, I could see it lit a spark in him. Clay started asking more questions and before I knew it he was saying, ‘This would make a great film.’

To be quite honest, I couldn’t see a story in it. ‘What the hell’s he talking about?’ I thought. ‘I’m talking about these guys who look after the toilets at events and my brother is talking about it being a great idea for a film.’

Clayton tried to explain it to me. ‘No, no, seeing the world through the eyes of these Splashdown workers, that’s interesting.’ He saw that they were like my uncles, who were never ashamed of who they were. As far as they were concerned, they did a trade and they were pretty good at it. In the words of my uncles, they were proud to be making an ‘honest living’. That’s what work used to be for the working class: you could stand tall and proud after doing an honest day’s work, with no need to apologise. There are decent people all over the world, but there is something fundamentally Australian about men like that. They are a vanishing breed now, but blokes like my uncles and the Splashdown workers have a unique way of speaking, of doing their job, even the way they see that job as essential. They were providing a service, and for that they never had to feel bad.

Clay was fascinated by how these boys used humour to deflect people’s disgust about their job. It was a subject close to Clay’s heart. Many years earlier Clay had paid his way through film school cleaning toilets at a factory in Melbourne’s west. By day he was groomed to be the great film auteur and by night treated as a lowly toilet cleaner — he knew there was gold to be mined from this world.

Personally I thought Clayton was mad. As if people would want to watch a film about the Splashdown toilet workers. But that was the seed: it hadn’t even been planted yet, but the fact that Clay recognised it had great story potential was where it all began. There’s something about stories that pass by under the radar that appeals to Clay; for a long time he wanted to make a film about the Beaconsfield mine disaster because he was intrigued by the idea of this quiet town in Tasmania suddenly thrust into the spotlight, right when everyone in town was going through something quite profound that they had never experienced before.

‘I want to film this character made up of Splashdown workers and all the best parts of our uncles,’ Clay kept telling me. He wanted to create a short film, a mockumentary about a plumber who was ignored and unappreciated, yet was one of the cogs in society’s machinery. As Clay put it, he knew that if his job went badly, he had the world coming down on him. The film would focus on this one character who was always decent, always ready to say ‘Good on ya’, and never devalued himself or anyone else. This bloke was never a nay-sayer — he was a yay-sayer, if there can be such a thing, seeing the best in everything. Many people came to think of him as ‘the portaloo bloke’ or ‘the bloke in the overalls’. We called him Kenny.

The overalls were more than a uniform for Kenny. Like so many hard workers of my uncles’ generation, farmers and tradies alike, Kenny’s overalls were like his skin, providing warmth and protection. These days we feel we have to match our clothing to our situation, but there are still some older, wiser people who will say, ‘Mate, your clothes are just there to keep you warm — and you’d look silly naked.’ Kenny wore his overalls and his Splashdown cap wherever he went. When people met him, they perceived his personality first, above and beyond the clothing he was in.

This bloke is just himself, he doesn’t adjust, and there is so much freedom in that. It’s like the freedom children have in being able to walk up to an adult and ask them anything that’s on their minds. Not that Kenny is childlike: in fact, Kenny can look after himself, and it was important to Clay and me to show Kenny in the ring, throwing a few punches.

My uncles were all as tough as ten men and twelve bears, with hands that could crush carbon into diamonds with ease. When I was a kid, my friends idolised comic-book heroes like Batman or Spiderman. My superheroes were much closer to home: to me, my dad and his brothers were faster, stronger and more powerful than any comic-book character. The stories Dad and his brothers told made me believe they were superhuman; I truly did think they could leap tall buildings.

Apart from being incredibly strong and rugged, my uncles had a strong sense of right and wrong. Injustice was not something any of our family members would allow. If I see anyone on the street getting a bad deal I can hear the voices of my uncles and my dad in my head saying, ‘You should step in.’

Dad and our uncles also had a very old Australian vernacular or turn of phrase, a special language that was spoken by the Diggers and people who had come through the Depression. It has died off now except in pockets. Growing up surrounded by that language, I didn’t realise that other people didn’t have that same experience; to me it was like finding out that we spoke differently in our tribe from how people did in most other villages. I guess if Willy Wonka had had kids and they grew up in his factory surrounded by lollies, they wouldn’t know how fortunate they were until they left the factory.

That vernacular and the upright quality of our family and our uncles were things Clay and I wanted to celebrate with this character Kenny. He never devalued himself, even if other people did. The character of Kenny is so decent that I would be more comfortable meeting the Queen as Kenny than I would be as Shane Jacobson. Kenny would walk into Buckingham Palace in his overalls and say to the Queen, ‘It’s lovely to meet you.’ Shane Jacobson would be embarrassed to do that; he would want to put a suit on and make sure he followed the right etiquette. I know it is weird how I just spoke about myself in the third person, but welcome to the nutty world of being immersed in a character.

By now I’d gone part time with Premier, so Clay said, ‘You’ve got the time, so let’s borrow the Premier truck, you put on some overalls, we’ll drive around, and you can tell me stories as Kenny.’ It took a long while for Clay to convince me, but one day I got the truck and put on the overalls and we drove around and I told toilet stories. By then I’d heard quite a few from the Splashdown workers. Clay filmed me, and as he filmed he kept asking me questions and prompting me. I answered them, not unlike the way our uncles would, but using the experiences of Splashdown workers.

And then there was the lisp. I’m a big-framed guy with a tattoo on my back; I had a goatee and the two earrings, so this Kenny character came across as a big, strong tradie. But as soon as he opens his mouth and people hear the lisp, it disarms them. I don’t know why that happens — and I probably don’t need to explain it either. Maybe I’m better off putting the question to you: why does the lisp make you instantly warm to Kenny?

The footage we shot that very first day, with me wearing a blue shirt of my own, not even in a Splashdown shirt, went into the short film that we made first, and it is still in the feature film that came later.

Over that year Clay and I continued filming at different events. Clay believed there was something in this Kenny character that was worth pursuing. I still wasn’t so sure.

‘Do you really think so?’ I would ask him.

‘Absolutely,’ Clay would reply.

We spoke to Glenn and some of the Splashdown workers and asked their permission to film, sometimes with them in the background and sometimes with me talking to them. Glenn not only gave us permission to film his company, he even offered to get some shirts printed up with a different name so we could use that in the film instead of the Splashdown name. ‘No,’ Clay said, ‘just leave everything as it is. We film around your workers and the company just as it is.’

Over the next little while, Glenn would let us know what events he had coming up: small music festivals or folk festivals or larger events. Clay would spend the weeks leading up to these events chiselling away on what he called a ‘scriptment’, which was a script with various ideas, dialogue, notes and story points. I never knew what the scenes were until the day of shooting. Clay would read out the scriptment on set then say, ‘Now play this scene out but be sure to ad lib or embrace any real action that might occur at the time.’ I had a clear road map of what was required for each scene but also the room I needed to invent and be spontaneous. It was a terrific creative way to work; hearing the scene breakdowns so close to shooting kept it very fresh and raw and most importantly, real.

Clay started collating all this footage and cut it up into a short film. In fact, we ended up with a 47-minute short film, which is an incredibly long short film.

One day Clay got a phone call from his friend Paul Harris, who is the director of the St Kilda Film Festival, Australia’s largest and oldest short film festival. Clay had entered many films in the festival before and they had always been very well received and won awards of one kind or another.

‘Are you going to be submitting anything this year for the festival?’ Paul asked him.

‘I’ve got this thing I’m working on called Kenny, but I might not have it done in time,’ Clay told him.

Paul said, ‘Look, we’d love you to submit something; we always enjoy having your work in the festival.’

That film cost us $1250-odd to produce, and of that about a quarter went on grog and food consumed by a few of my mates while they were being extras in the background for one particular scene where Kenny turns up for a birthday party for his brother, played by Clayton.

Apart from drinks and snacks for the bar scene, we kept costs down by doing everything ourselves. I would load the toilets onto the back of Glenn’s trucks and drive to wherever we were filming that day. I’d meet up with Clay and we’d start filming. Clay was the cameraman, writer, editor and director. We did the audio ourselves, I provided my own wardrobe, and out of all of that we made our short film.

When we finished filming the final scene, the crew went to Lygon Street for a wrap party, a time-honoured tradition in the film industry. Clay had a cappuccino and I had a latte. That was it: we were the entire crew.

We did need a cast, of course. In our minds, there was just one way to make a short film for that kind of money: you used your family because they’re cheap. Really cheap. We’re blessed to have a family full of people that can act, and when he’s directing, Clay has a very special knack of making people feel comfortable, even if they are not experienced actors. Filming over a very long period of time as we did, eventually people relaxed into it.

You’ve got me playing Kenny, and Kenny’s brother is played by Clayton. Clay’s son (and my nephew) Jesse plays Kenny’s son. My ex-wife in Kenny is Clay’s partner, Vicki. The woman who loses her ring down the toilet is also Vicki. Clay just said, ‘We’ll just pixillate her face because we don’t want anyone seeing it’s the same person, but it’ll just look like we didn’t get her approval to be filmed.’ We never set out to fool anyone into thinking that Kenny is real, but his character really convinces people that they’re watching a true story.

Kenny’s father is played by our dad, Ron Jacobson. My elder sister, Kim, plays Julie, the best friend of Kenny’s ex-wife. Our little sister, Natalie, isn’t in the film because she was pregnant at the time and wasn’t available on certain days when we were filming particular scenes.

Glenn Preusker, the owner of Splashdown, plays himself in the film, and Glenn’s wife, Jenny, who runs the office for Splashdown, appears as the lady in the Splashdown office. Glenn and Jenny’s eldest daughter, Hayley, appears in the Splashdown office during the Melbourne Cup scene. In another scene from the Melbourne Cup there is a bunch of drunk girls, one of whom is Alison, Clayton’s step-daughter.

Most of the Splashdown workers in Kenny really are Splashdown workers. One exception is the English guy, Sammy; he’s played by Kim’s husband, Ian, the man from Hitchin.

Our mum plays the woman on the plane who complains to the hosties that the toilet is blocked. The male flight attendant at the front door of the plane is Sean Lander, who worked with Clayton on editing Kenny. Jackie, the female hostie who is Kenny’s love interest, is Eve von Bibra, who worked for a while at a film company with Clay. Eve is also one of the original Chantoozies, a pop group that did big things in the late 1980s.

The Kenny cast also includes three guys who are better known for their work as film directors than as actors. David Michod, who plays the male nurse in the hospital scene, is the writer and director of Animal Kingdom. Kriv Stenders plays a drunk buck, naked with lipstick and texta on his bum; he’s the director of Red Dog. And of course Clayton Jacobson. Directors of three of the most successful Australian films of the past decade, all characters in Kenny.

The boxing gym in Kenny is Dad’s gym, where Clayton and I had both boxed from a very early age. In the film I’m sparring with an indigenous guy, Michael Karpaney, an amazing fighter who fought main event fights in the early 1970s on Channel 7’s TV Ringside. Dad was one of Michael’s trainers, so the fact that Michael Karpaney is in the ring with me playing Kenny is a salute to our past.

We littered the film with many friends and family, as well as people and places that have a special meaning to us. Not every person we asked to be in the film appeared though. When Clay and I explained to friends, ‘Look, if you’re available, my brother and I are shooting a movie,’ sometimes they would say, ‘I can’t do it Thursday,’ or ‘I’m away this weekend.’ Then when Kenny came out, those people would ring to say, ‘Oh my God, you didn’t tell me it was going to be a movie movie.’ I wasn’t aware I had to say the word twice, as though you would say ‘I’m getting married married,’ or ‘We’re having a baby baby.’ But maybe it had sounded a bit hokey to them: two brothers making a movie about a toilet guy.

When Clay was a teenager making films and showing them on a sheet hung in a caravan park, there was something very sweet and innocent about it, but since then he had honed his skills as a director, and his ability to do great work had been proven time and time again. So when he told me that we were going to make a short film, I had no doubt that he would do a great job and this would be something quite special. Later, when Kenny was a feature film and people kept saying, ‘Oh my God, this movie you made is actually at the cinemas,’ and I kept thinking, ‘Well, yes, that’s where movies get shown,’ it dawned on me that they hadn’t understood Clay’s thirst to direct a feature film and my thirst to act in one, or the full burn inside us both to entertain the masses.

People’s vision of what we were doing was nowhere near as grand as ours. If we had wanted to be politicians, we would never have aspired to be heads of the local council, we would have wanted to be prime minister.

When the 2004 St Kilda Film Festival came round, Clayton was in Japan filming a TV commercial for a Japanese client. I went along with Glenn and Jenny Preusker from Splashdown and a group of friends to watch Kenny the Self-proclaimed Scatologist (that was the full title of the short film — a long title for a short film before we gave a short title to a long film). We took our seats in the audience, having no idea how this was going to be received. When the film was over I walked outside, took out my phone and rang Clay in Japan.

‘I’ve just come out of the screening.’

‘How did it go?’

‘They loved it.’

‘You’re kidding me.’

‘They absolutely loved it, they cheered and laughed and applauded all the way through. At the end, people were coming up and grabbing me and saying, “It was fantastic, we love that film, we love that character.”’ I couldn’t find enough words to explain to him how much the audience enjoyed it, how they just lapped it up.

‘Well, there you go,’ Clay said, ‘I thought they’d enjoy it a bit, at best.’

At the festival we took out the People’s Choice Award and Best Comedy Award. Once again Clay wasn’t able to go to the awards night because he was working on a project, so I went along and picked up the awards. Before the night we knew we’d won one award, but it came as a surprise to get two.

The prize money was $2500, and Clay had an idea about how to spend it. ‘This film will never be seen on a big screen again,’ he said. ‘So what do you say we hire out a theatre and do a very special screening for the workers and their families?’

We hired out the Sun Theatre in Yarraville, a beautiful old theatre in the west of Melbourne that had been wonderfully restored. I borrowed a big projector from work and plugged it into their sound system, and we invited family and friends and all of the Splashdown staff and their partners, children and friends. We had VIP seating down the front reserved for the Splashdown workers and their families, so they got the chance to be the heroes — because they really were the heroes of this film.

Everyone had a great time at the screening. With the money that we had left over from the two and a half grand, we threw on drinks and nibbles for all our guests at a bar across the road from the Sun Theatre. While we were there having a few drinks, Glenn Preusker’s associate and friend Norm Groves told us, ‘I have some friends in business that own a very large company. I think they would be very interested in investing in Kenny to make it into a feature film.’

‘You’re kidding me,’ Clay replied.

‘No, they’re serious,’ Glenn went on to tell us. ‘I’ve hit them up for a million bucks and they are still interested. Let’s get together tomorrow night and chat about it.’

We both just stood there, gobsmacked.

The next night Clay and I drove over to Glenn’s house to convince him that there was not a feature film in Kenny. We had been filming for the best part of a year; Clay had cut out all the worst bits and kept all the best bits and what was left was 47 minutes long. Clay truly believed that was all there was to this little film; in fact he thought the short was still two minutes over length. It was a riff on decency, he always said, on how long until even a good man eventually snaps. And that was it. ‘There is no feature film to be made from this story, we’ve said all that can be said in this short film,’ Clay repeated to me in the car.

So we walked in to Glenn’s house to tell him we couldn’t take the million dollars.

‘Are you sure you can’t make it a feature film?’ he kept asking us.

‘If I thought I could make a feature film out of this, believe me I would,’ Clay said. ‘But as the filmmaker and the director I can tell you there’s not a feature film in it.’

Truth is we were also concerned that if we agreed, Norm’s friends might never see a coin of their money back. The Oz industry is a tough game when it comes to investment.

While we were busy trying to convince Glenn that there wasn’t a feature film to be made and we shouldn’t take the million dollars, Glenn’s wife, Jenny, came in to the room and said, ‘I’m sorry to disturb you guys, but Glenn — Ron from Ameri-Can is on the phone from America. He says time is running out and he needs to know now whether you are definitely coming to the Pumper and Cleaner Expo.’

‘Tell him yes, I will be coming,’ Glenn said.

There was a slight pause in the room.

‘What’s the Pumper and Cleaner Expo?’ we both asked.

‘It’s the international toilet expo. It’s one of the largest expos you could ever wish to see, all dedicated to toilets,’ Glenn told us. ‘The venue’s in Nashville; 2000 rooms of accommodation are booked out nearly twelve months in advance with people who go to this toilet expo.

‘Trust me,’ he said, ‘it’s poo HQ.’

Clay looked from Glenn, over to Jenny and across to me, and said, ‘My God, I think we’ve got ourselves a movie. Kenny needs to go to America.’

‘You think so?’ Glenn said.

‘Absolutely. That’s what this story has been lacking — the Pumper and Cleaner Expo is perfect and if we can film there we’ve got ourselves a feature film,’ Clay said. ‘But we still can’t take the million dollars or we’ll lose Norm’s friends’ money.’

‘How much do you think you can make the film for?’ Glenn said.

Clay scribbled a quick budget on a piece of paper. He looked up and said, ‘I can do it for half that money.’

‘How is that possible?’ Glenn asked. We had talked about the cost of making films with him so he knew enough about the economics.

We explained that by just expanding our approach slightly we could make the feature with a very small skeleton crew and only bring in larger crews when the scenes required them.

‘Well, in that case, I’ll give you the money myself,’ Glenn said.

We had ourselves an investor. In that meeting Kenny went from being just a short film that two brothers had made for the St Kilda Film Festival to becoming a feature film.

‘We’d better think of a company name,’ Clay said.

‘Thunderbox,’ I suggested. That’s such a great, classic Aussie name for a toilet and it has a raw grandeur to it. It seemed fitting.

Clay looked at me. ‘Thunderbox? Thunderbox Films it is.’

‘No worries then,’ said Glenn. ‘Go and open an account and I’ll put some money in tomorrow.’

There was so much to be discussed, we kept talking through our plans until late that night: the extra filming, the equipment that we would need to buy, the business and legal side of making this happen. As we talked on, Jenny kept bringing out mugs of coffee and plates full of Tim Tams and Chocolate Royals. It wasn’t until Clay and I left the house late that night that we realised Jenny may have had one biscuit if that; we recalled Glenn grabbing three or four, because he does enjoy his chocolate, but we were pretty sure that between the two of us, Clay and I had demolished at least two packets of Chocolate Royals.

The next day we started the process of setting up a film company. We asked our lawyer, Bryce Menzies, to draw up a contract between Glenn Preusker and our new company, Thunderbox Films. One of the important stipulations in that contract was that in order for it to be deemed fully executed, apart from making a film, we had to give Glenn Preusker two packets of Chocolate Royals.

From that moment on we continued to film at events, but this time we were making a feature film.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

BREAKING EVERY RULE

Now we had to get Kenny to Nashville, and to do that we needed an aeroplane. But we couldn’t just turn up on a commercial flight and start filming the people on board, then hope they would all sign release forms allowing us to use the footage in a film. Not only that, the noise inside a plane would make recording difficult. You’d never get airline approval to film on a proper flight anyway, so we had to find another way to film the scene where Kenny meets Jackie, the airline hostess.

One day Clay rang me and said, ‘I’ve got it.’ Ansett had gone under not long before, but their aeroplanes were still sitting in hangars in Melbourne — and in other places, I imagine, but of particular interest to us were the planes in Melbourne. He got in touch with the administrators and arranged with them to hire a plane.

Early one morning, a bunch of family and friends — our mum; Clay’s friend Ray’s parents, Mr and Mrs Boseley; people from the boxing gym; Vicki’s mates; all sorts of people — arrived at the aircraft hangar for filming. Clay had told them what they should wear, what sort of bags to bring and what to pack in their bag. ‘Whatever you take on a long flight, you’re going to need it here because we’ll be in this plane for about eight hours.’ At home, Clay had designed boarding passes with Accent Airlines (the name of the invented airline) on them, numbered them and printed them up. As everyone arrived, Clay gave each passenger a boarding pass and said, ‘Once you get on, you just have to imagine you’re on an eight-hour flight. We will break for lunch and you’ll be able to get off the plane then to eat, but other than that we’re on there for eight hours. The only sad news is that when we’re finished you’ll be nowhere but Melbourne again.’

Clay assured me that even though these people weren’t actors it would all look real, and it did. After a few hours of sitting on the plane, people were no longer very interested in us filming scenes. Some were reading books or magazines; some were working on laptops; some went to sleep, so everyone in the background looked very natural because they really were just sitting on a plane. In the film, there is one man I speak to on the plane, Randall Berger, who is an actor and an old friend of Clay’s; Clay sat Randall beside me knowing that I could converse with him.

One thing that Clayton wanted to be authentic was the pilot’s announcement that comes over the speakers. That is the voice of John Musso, the brother of Clay’s partner, Vicki. John is in fact a pilot — not only that, he was a pilot for Ansett before they went under.

Once that scene had been filmed, Clay and I then really did fly to Nashville to film at the Pumper and Cleaner Expo. The Expo was everything that Glenn promised and even a little bit more. I can’t speak for Clayton, but by then we had spent so long with the Splashdown workers that I was starting to get excited about some of the developments in the sanitation-and-toilet industry. I’d hear myself say something like, ‘That looks like a great pump,’ and I realised I was probably enjoying the world of Kenny just a little too much. Both Clay and I were certainly shocked by how much we knew. When someone at the Expo would explain, ‘This piece of equipment can do this or that and six other things,’ we absolutely knew what they were talking about.

Clay wanted Kenny to be like a fish out of water when in Nashville, although not a small fish; even when he was outside his usual environment, Kenny never saw himself as a small fish in a big pond, he just knew he was in a different pond. The idea was that Kenny would end up doing a great business deal with a classic ten-gallon-hat-type cowboy almost by accident. But Clay was concerned this would seem clichéd. Then his Japanese friend Mori called, offering to come over and act in Kenny. Mori was one of Clay’s old clients and is still a very good friend. He worked for a large advertising firm, and in fact it was Mori that Clay was working with in Japan the night the Kenny short film screened at the St Kilda Film Festival. Years before, Clay and Mori had made a short film together called Tanaka. They had always enjoyed a terrific business relationship and Clay felt Kenny should experience the same.

‘Will your frequent flyer points get you to Nashville?’ he asked Mori.

‘Of course,’ was the answer, and the Sushi Cowboy was born. Mori was only in Nashville for a few days; he was so jet-lagged that in between takes, he would fall asleep wherever we were filming.

Glenn and his staff at Splashdown had often talked about working at the motor racing at Mount Panorama in Bathurst, and they had plenty of stories about the ‘Hoons on the Hill’ in particular. Up on the hill is a camping area that at one time was closer to Mad Max than a regular sporting venue. It was beyond insane up there, with people doing donuts (aka circle work), as well as general motoring mayhem, misconduct and madness. Clay wanted to capture some of that madness.

I don’t think any of the race-event organisers was keen on the idea of us actually filming at Bathurst: it was simply too dangerous, and to be honest I don’t think they wanted us highlighting what goes on up on that hill. One of the people Glenn had invited along to see our short film was Bob Jane. Most people now know Bob Jane for his tyre shops, but before any of that Bob Jane was a racing-car champion; he was four-times winner of the Armstrong 500, the race that went on to become the Bathurst 1000. He also happened to own Calder Park Raceway, the motor racing circuit in Melbourne. So we went and met with him and asked, ‘Would we be able to come to Calder Park and film a pretend truck race?’

‘Absolutely,’ Bob Jane said, and he gave us full access to the racetrack. Other than having to pay for the paramedics and emergency staff to be there in case there was an incident — we were going to have trucks racing around the track, after all — we had open slather to film as we pleased.

The next thing we needed was some trucks. Clay asked me, ‘Do you think you can sort out some racing trucks?’

‘Let me ring a bloke,’ I said.

A good friend of mine, Dave Pitman, runs a company called Pitman Trucks. I called Dave and explained that we wanted to stage a truck race. Apart from selling trucks, Dave used to race them and he has a lot of friends involved in truck and motor racing.

‘No worries,’ Dave said. ‘Just tell me the date and I’ll be there with a bunch of trucks and drivers.’ So we invented a race called the Pitman Challenge. Dave had ‘Pitman Challenge’ stickers printed and stuck them across the top of the truck windscreens.

One night Clay and I went to Calder Park to meet one of the operations managers and talk through logistics for our imaginary truck race. The Thunderdome is an old NASCAR racetrack; they don’t use it for races any more but the track is still there. The Thunderdome is huge: 1.8 kilometres long, you could almost fit the MCG in it three times over. There are massive lights all around the stadium, so while I’m standing there with Clay, this guy says, ‘Right, we’ll turn the lights on.’ He goes down into a little substation near the edge of the ground, flicks a bunch of switches and about ten per cent of the lighting towers at one end of the stadium come on.

‘Where do you turn those other ones on from?’ we ask him.

‘Oh no, they’re not connected up to power,’ he says. ‘If you want to turn those on you’ll have to do that with generators.’

‘Right. Generators,’ I repeat, thinking this through.

Clay looks at me and says, ‘How many generators do you think that would take?’

‘That would take a lot of generators,’ I say.

‘Yeah, from memory I think it is a lot of generators,’ the operations manager adds helpfully.

It was time to ring another friend of mine, Darren Jackson, who worked for a large generator company.

‘I’ve got a favour to ask,’ I told him. ‘We need some generators out at Calder Park.’

I gave him a list of what we wanted, which was, as predicted, a lot.

‘Leave it to me, buddy,’ Daz said.

Come shoot day a small convoy of Splashdown trucks started delivering all the generators. I positioned them around the track and a couple of the electricians who worked at Premier came out and helped wire them up.

Glenn had kindly given us some portaloos to set on fire. I rang Des Lawton, who I’d done fireworks with for thirteen years. ‘Des,’ I said, ‘I need to make up a flame effect, we need to make it look like a portaloo is on fire.’

‘No probs, mate,’ said Des.

We sorted out our flame bar, which is a metal tube with holes through which we run gas to make controllable flame effects, and headed out to Calder Park. Clay and I had rung all our friends, and a few friends of friends, who were car enthusiasts to come out. I’d organised some tents that we set up so that it looked like there was a campsite. There were no facilities out there so Clayton organised a food van to come so that people had something to eat, and we’d brought some Splashdown toilets out to handle that side of the business.

Nash Edgerton, the stunt coordinator and stunt man, was out there getting ready to do the stunts. Clay had organised a heap of his film mates to come out and operate other cameras and help run the shoot, and as well as Nash Edgerton we had a stunt-driving coordinator for the actual truck racing. Some of my friends who work with the CFA and are first aiders were there too, as well as some good mates from the Rover crew. I picked some larger blokes who would stand out in the crowd and look big and rough, but if anything got out of control with the toilet scene, their job was to run in with the fire extinguishers, which we hid in the crowd, and put the fire out. I also had some smaller mates there too: Brad List, if you’re reading this, no offence — but you have to admit that Cam Hodges and Mark Pinkerton are much bigger than you, mate. That’s probably because you’re a very little man but a good one. Anyway, back to the story.

The only fire they weren’t supposed to put out was the one that was coming off me. There is a scene Clay wrote that involved me catching fire, and I remember asking Clay, ‘What made you think of that?’

‘I just want to watch you burn,’ he replied. ‘It’s good drama, but mostly I want to watch you burn.’

I can now boast that I have been set fire to three times in my life: once for Kenny, once for a Top Gear stunt, and once by a friend who threw some Zippo fluid on me and set fire to me as a joke. The first two times were under very controlled circumstances, the third one not so much.

The making of Kenny broke every rule about how a film should be made. We did everything in reverse: we developed a character before there was ever any idea of making a film. We made a short film thinking that was the end of it; the feature film was then suggested by strangers who offered money to make it feature length; and then the person who helped us turn that offer down became the sole investor. Normally you write a story, work on the characters, find an investor then a distributor, then a film gets made. But with Kenny, it was all in reverse.

When Madman Entertainment saw the short film and a little teaser that Clay created, they loved it, so they came on board as our distributor. When the film was pretty much finished at last, Madman assembled a publicity and marketing team headed up by a woman called Deb Fryers. In the years since, Deb has come to be like a sister to me, and I consider us incredibly fortunate to have been put on her job list. Deb and her team assembled in Madman’s theatrette to see the film. They were told they would be watching a new movie for which they would do the publicity and marketing, and after they’d watched the film they would meet Clayton, our producer, Rohan Timlock, and me.

Once we reached this point of meeting people and talking about the film, I just assumed I would be doing it as Shane Jacobson. That’s what usually happens: the actors go around and talk about the film, but they’re not in character, they’re just being themselves. From the very outset, though, Clay said to me, ‘You’ve been Shane Jacobson all your life and no one has cared enough about Shane Jacobson for you to be famous. This character Kenny comes on screen and people immediately love him. Kenny has had more effect in one and a half hours than you’ve had in 35 years.’

We laugh about it now, but at the time he was adamant that I should do all the publicity as Kenny. I disagreed with him strongly. I wanted to go out as me, but Clayton said, ‘Anyone involved in promoting this film should meet Kenny, because he is the thing that sells this film.’

Finally I agreed to do it, so when I met the publicity and marketing team it was one of the first times that Kenny had walked into reality as Kenny. Deb Fryers told me later that the impact was instant. ‘It was like being a kid and meeting Humphrey B. Bear.’ It’s what we would later hear again and again from people who saw the film: there was something about this big bloke in the overalls with the lisp that made them want to connect with him. The feeling that Kenny gives people is the feeling I got when I was with my uncles. After the film was released, when people came up to me and said, ‘We loved your film and we loved Kenny,’ I felt proud to be able to say, ‘Then you would love my family.’ It felt not so much that we had made a film and showed it to the world, but that we were given an opportunity to let the world into our lounge room.

It turned out that Clay was right, the bastard. From then on we had an agreement that once the Splashdown cap goes on, I’m Kenny. Barry Humphries was our inspiration in that: both Clayton and I are huge admirers of all his work, and it is well known in the industry that when the wig goes on, he is Edna. What a great model to work off.

Now that we were close to Kenny becoming a reality, there were so many people to thank for making it happen. There were the Splashdown workers, our family and friends — all of these people who had contributed to this film, expecting very little in return. This time we had to do something more than a cappuccino in Lygon Street. We needed to get the biggest cinema we could find for our cast and crew screening, and we came up with the Greater Union cinema in Russell Street, Melbourne. It holds about 700 people, and the place was pretty well chockers.

Apart from the movie premiere itself, this was one of the most special screenings. We never thought we’d get to see Kenny on an even bigger screen than the St Kilda Film Festival or the Sun Theatre in Yarraville. Now here it was on this massive screen — not only that, from this day forth its life as a feature film in cinemas would be on massive screens.

Most of all, it was remarkable to have everyone who had contributed — not only to the film but to our lives — sitting there watching it. Never again would there be assembled an audience that was so embedded in Kenny; their fingerprints were over every part of the film, in a metaphorical sense.

There was one debt that had to be repaid that evening. At the end of the screening we thanked everyone involved in the film and we brought Glenn and Jenny Preusker up on stage. We handed Glenn a copy of our contract and, having finally completed and delivered everything else that was required of us, handed him two packets of Chocolate Royals.

Not long before the film came out, the Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards took place at the Central City Studios in Melbourne. Splashdown had the contract to provide the toilets for the evening, so Glenn brought along their ‘five-star toilets’, which have plasma television screens in front of the men’s urinals. Clay got some smaller posters printed up and I bought some plastic sleeves and we went into every one of those toilets and put a Kenny poster in them. Clay and Sean cut together a ‘sizzle reel’, a short trailer, and we had that running on constant loop on the screens inside these five-star toilets. Throughout the night our producer, Rohan, systematically went in and out of the toilets to hear what people were saying about it. Or indeed if they were saying anything at all. At one point Rohan reported back that Geoffrey Rush had commented that at the AFIs you can’t even go to the toilet without having to watch a film trailer.

Russell Crowe was hosting the AFI Awards that year, and while we were setting up the toilets and putting the posters in, he was on stage rehearsing. Clay turned to me and said, ‘That’ll be you up there one day.’ Clay always said to me that I had the skills to do much more than even I thought. If we were watching Billy Crystal on television presenting the Academy Awards, Clay would turn to me and say, ‘You can be that kind of person. You are that kind of person; people enjoy watching you.’ But he also urged me not to be too serious, and never to think that I needed to be a serious actor. ‘Just give them the full package,’ Clay would tell me.

Back then, Kenny hadn’t even been released and we certainly had no idea that it was going to do as well as it did. Or that the following year we would be standing there on stage with Clayton nominated for Best Director of a Feature Film, me for Best Actor in a Feature Film, and Dad for Best Supporting Actor in a Feature Film. Or that I would be lucky enough to take away an AFI Award that year for best lead actor. Or that four years after that, in 2010, I would go on to host the AFI Awards myself. I still remember Clayton saying to me, ‘I told you so.’ Once again, the bastard was right.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A TOWN CALLED POOWONG

Of all the remarkable things that happened in that year leading up to launching Kenny on the world, nothing could equal the birth of my son. In September 2005 my partner Kellie and I welcomed our beautiful boy into the world, and nothing could compare with such joy. I now have three wonderful children: my son with Kellie, as well as a daughter and a son with Felicity. I haven’t spoken in any detail about my children in this book for a very good reason: we decided not to involve our children in public life until they decided for themselves whether they want that. We would love for them to make their own choice rather than bestow what may be a burden upon them before they are at the right age to understand the full consequences of being in the public eye.

We decided to hold the premiere of Kenny in a country town, which would best suit the style of film it is and the salt-of-the-earth characters in it. ‘Souls of the earth’ might be a better phrase, and they truly exist out in country towns; that’s where you’ll find good people like Kenny. It gets back to the spirit of my uncles, which is also the spirit of rural Australia. There’s something in their outlook that is deeply philosophical in a laconic, down-to-earth way.

My Uncle Bill had a block of land with a shack on it just outside Dereel, a small town about an hour and a half’s drive from Melbourne. One day Dad went out there to catch up with Bill and they were sitting on the front porch having a beer. From where they were sitting on the front porch they could see across to a hill on the block with a tractor on top of it. As they’re enjoying their beer, for no apparent reason the tractor started to roll down the hill. Maybe the handbrake hadn’t been applied or perhaps it was faulty, but it was as if a ghost had pushed that tractor.

It was heading right towards where they were sitting and was clearly going to hit either the shed beside Bill’s shack or the house itself. ‘Jesus Christ,’ Dad said in a strictly non-biblical way, ‘that thing’s going to go through the shed, or through the house.’

Dad got to his feet and put his beer down, getting ready to jump into action.

‘What are you getting so worked up about?’ Uncle Bill said. ‘Unless you can stop it, there’s no point in fussing.’

‘Well, we can’t just sit here!’ Dad said. At this point the tractor veered more towards the shed than the house.

‘I don’t know why you’re getting so excited. There’s nothing you can do unless you can stop a rolling tractor. Can you do that?’

‘No, I can’t.’

‘Then let’s sit back and let everything unfold.’

My family taught me that there is always someone bigger, stronger, smarter or richer than you, so you should never think you’re at the top of the heap. That day Uncle Bill reckoned there’d be something bigger than that tractor that would stop it for sure. And there was: a massive gum tree was lying in the long grass, and the tractor hit it and came to a halt. Emergency averted.

After a while Bill said, ‘Well, we need to tow that tractor over to the shed because it’ll need some work on it now.’ They walked over to an old pickup truck that Uncle Bill used around the farm. When Dad got in the passenger’s side he found the seat was soaking wet.

‘This seat’s bloody wet,’ he commented.

‘Of course it is,’ said Bill. ‘The window’s down and it’s been raining.’

‘Why on earth wouldn’t you put the window up?’ Dad asked.

‘Because I smoke in the truck and the truck stinks, so if I leave the window down it doesn’t smell as bad.’

‘Yeah, but then the seat gets wet.’

‘I don’t sit on that side of the truck.’

That’s the kind of man that Uncle Bill was and all my uncles were. He reckoned that if Dad wanted to have a dry seat in the truck he should come up the week before he planned on visiting and wind the window up.

About an hour and a half’s drive out of Melbourne in the opposite direction to Uncle Bill’s place at Dereel is a town called Poowong. Clay came across the name and we decided that if you wanted to launch a film about a guy who works with portaloos, Poowong would be a good place to do it.

We approached the town of Poowong and spoke with the council and the ladies from the Poowong Community Consultative Committee, and they couldn’t have been more excited and more helpful. Talk about bending over backwards — they bent backwards, forwards, sideways and then did a backflip to help us in every way possible. The deal was sealed for me when the CCC did the catering for the meeting and there were egg-and-lettuce sandwiches. You know you’re in good hands when you get egg-and-lettuce sandwiches in a country town.

The town got behind us 100 per cent: once the word went out in the district that this event was happening, it was sold out almost immediately.

When the time for the premiere came round, we returned to Poowong. It was quite a convoy: myself and Glenn Preusker; Richard Davis, one of our gun AV guys from Premier; Steve Kainey, our AV manager from Premier; Tim Milliken (formerly the bass player for the Divinyls and now an amazing sound guy); Clay and Rohan and Deb. Also with us was my best mate, Andrew ‘Macka’ McKinnon, who luckily for me is an incredibly successful and competent production manager and site manager who has worked with some of the biggest acts in the world. Although this may not have been his biggest day at the office, I was beyond happy to have Macka beside me. Not just for his expertise but because he is a dear and honest friend who is never shy about telling me if he thinks I’m wrong. He’s also one of those people who will ring out of the blue just to say, ‘How have you been, mate? How’s your week?’ One of the great joys of my life was when Macka and his now wife Karen asked me to marry them. A celebrant came in to do the formal parts but I was able to do the rest of the service, which is a memory I hold very dear to my heart.

I drove the twelve-tonne truck full of lighting equipment, truss and red carpet, Glenn drove a truck loaded with portaloos and towed a huge Kenny billboard to go out the front of the town hall as a display, and Steve drove the Premier AV van. We spent an entire day setting it all up: the projector, the sound system, a red carpet, moving lights that did a searchlight effect out in front of the town hall, drapes to decorate the walls — I would like to think the town hall looked better than she ever had.

However, I didn’t actually attend the world premiere of Kenny. Once I had set everything up and before the audience started to arrive for the premiere of the film I was in, I had to go outside and hide in the sleeper cabin of the truck I had driven there, and wait until the end of the film so that Kenny could come out and meet the people.

It was hard not being able to sit in the town hall and listen to how the crowd was responding to the film in its finished state. At one point Clay slipped out of the hall and came over to let me know how it was going. ‘They’re loving it,’ he told me. I snuck out of the truck and he and I stood at the side of the building for a little while, listening to the laughter coming out of the windows and knowing which part of the film they were listening to because we knew the film so well by then. Clay knew every breath, let alone every line.

If I could have had someone film the special moments in my life, one of the ones I would want to capture would be me and Clay listening to the laughter come out of the window of the town hall in Poowong.

If truth be told, though, the real reason Clay came out of the hall was because he had to have a piss in the bushes. Then when he saw the light on in the sleeper of the truck he decided to come over and ask how I was going and have a bit of a chat. Being in a country town, it was okay to pee in the bushes. That’s the other reason you don’t want the Jacobsons to hold a premiere in the city: we might go out and have a piss in the street.

The strong word-of-mouth reviews for Kenny continued, partly because hundreds of people were trapped inside tubes flying through the air, watching our film for free. We had sold it to Qantas and the film was playing in planes at the same time as it was out in cinemas, and that almost never happens. Those people on flights long enough to have a film as their in-flight entertainment would land in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Perth, Darwin, Alice Springs, and every time one of those flying cinemas landed, people would get off their flights and start telling people in cities and country towns across the country that they had to go and see this film called Kenny about this toilet guy. Everyone always says, ‘It’s about the toilet guy.’

To this very day, Qantas cabin attendants come up to me and say, ‘We loved it when Kenny was on. The plane would be filled with laughter: it would start with one or two people in business class and quite a few in economy, and then ten or twenty more in economy would be laughing, and some others would say, “What is it they’re laughing at?” then one by one they would all put on their headsets.’ One hostie said to me, ‘We didn’t have to do much when Kenny was playing because everyone would be laughing and watching the film.’

Funnily enough, although Kenny was described as a comedy, Kenny doesn’t tell a single joke in the film. All of the humour is in the way he is in the world and his turns of phrase. Kenny was often considered something of a philosopher because of that turn of phrase. Clay always felt it would have that effect on people because it is a language that is of another age. Older people would come up to me and say, ‘My husband used to speak like that when he was alive. I miss it, but for a moment you took me back there; thank you so much.’ People in their forties and fifties would say, ‘That was my dad [or my grandfather]; I remember it so well, and that reminded me of him.’

Usually when a film comes out, you do a promotional lap of Australia. Some of the actors, or maybe just one, spend a week or two going around the major cities and doing radio shows over the phone or in the studio and interviews with journos. But for seven months we toured Australia and New Zealand and eventually England as well. We visited all the major cities and the regional towns too. I would do every radio and press and TV interview as Kenny, all of them in person, never breaking character.

Clay knew we were on a winner when he got a phone call from Bryan Brown. ‘I only twigged towards the end that this thing was a bloody hoax,’ he told Clayton. ‘I liked the idea better that this man was out there, and I’m shattered to think that it’s just a character.’

I know what he meant. Kenny is a better bloke than I am, but I do hope one day to be as good a man as Kenny.

The myth solidified a little when I went on Channel 9’s Today show. Karl Stefanovic and Jessica Rowe were hosting at the time, and when I turned up in character and left in character they thought Kenny was real.

We never set out to pretend that this guy was a real person. He was always just a character. Kenny’s name isn’t even on the poster, other than at the top as the movie name. You look down the bottom and it doesn’t say ‘Kenny Smyth’, it says ‘Shane Jacobson’. As soon as the film finishes the credits say ‘Kenny: Shane Jacobson’. Never did Clay or Deb or I say, ‘We’re going to try to convince people he’s real.’ Clay just said, ‘People like Kenny more than they like you, Shane, so let’s put Kenny out there.’

In October 2006 60 Minutes approached us about doing a story, the ‘big reveal’ of the Jacobson brothers. Up until then Clay had kept well out of the way, doing very little press. Deb kept saying to him, ‘You should do some interviews,’ but Clay argued, ‘No, no, no, everyone else does the chats to the director, we won’t do that.’ I think that’s where a lot of the misconception that Kenny was real came from, the idea that it was all my story as opposed to something the Jacobson brothers had done together. Clay was the Wizard of Oz behind a curtain, and he stayed hidden away for so long that the 60 Minutes story really gained some significance as the first unveiling of the Jacobson brothers behind Kenny.

We had some great support from people who came out of nowhere to help along the way. Hugh Jackman wanted to meet up with Clay and me. Apart from being a tremendous performer and one of the earth’s nicest souls, Hugh is also a great supporter of Australian talent and projects. We met up in Sydney and we were talking about the film and our other projects, what Clay had coming up and what I was doing, and Hugh was talking about some of his own work. At that point he was starring as Peter Allen in The Boy from Oz at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, and he said, ‘It would be great to get Kenny on stage with me.’

A few weeks later I flew back up to Sydney. The production team sat me in a special spot, near an aisle on the first level of seating, right up the front. During one part of the show, Hugh looks into the crowd and sees me there dressed as Kenny. ‘My goodness, Kenny’s in the audience,’ Hugh says, and brings me up on stage. All of a sudden I’ve got to do a little dance with Hugh and we have a bit of fun and carry on. When he sends me back to my seat after a few minutes on stage with him, Hugh says to the audience, ‘You’ve got to go and see this film. It’s an amazing film and he’s a great Australian. Great to see you, Kenny, so glad you came.’ As I go off stage Hugh has taken my Splashdown cap, so he puts it on and sings his next song, still wearing Kenny’s hat.

I remember sitting there thinking, ‘Hugh Jackman is on stage as Peter Allen wearing Kenny’s hat with Splashdown written across it. If only Glenn Preusker could be here to see this; if only Clay could be here right now.’ Clay was busy working with Deb on future PR and marketing for the film and starting to do deals with the UK and America, so his partner Vicki was there instead, sitting beside me in the audience.

Right at the end of the show, they had a camera cut to me again, and Hugh said, ‘Remember, everyone, go and see Kenny; it’s a great film.’ In Sydney that next week the figures skyrocketed thanks to Hugh Jackman. Ten thousand people said that Hugh Jackman told them to see this film, so those ten thousand people went along and each took four people with them.

After the show Vicki and I were escorted back to Hugh’s room. We walked in and Hugh was there. ‘Mate, that was great fun,’ he said.

‘Mate, how good are you and how amazing is that performance of yours!’ I replied.

Hugh’s not much of a one for sitting around and talking about how good he is, so he just said how great it was that I could get up there with him. All of this is while he’s standing there with his shirt off, covered in sweat. My sister-in-law was looking at Hugh Jackman, who is as fit as an Olympic athlete crossbred with a weightlifting cougar. A few people came in the room and had a chat with us, including Rungy, an old crewmate of mine who I hadn’t seen for a while. ‘You all catch up for a while. I’m just going to clean up,’ Hugh said, then he disappeared to have a shower. Not long after a much cleaner version of Hugh came out, and it was time to say goodbye.

As we left, Vicki said, ‘What an amazing day.’

‘Yeah, I thought it was pretty special too,’ I replied, thinking about getting up on stage.

‘No,’ Vicki said, ‘I just got to see Hugh Jackman both clean and sweaty, and without his shirt on.’

When we got home and told Clay about our evening, he just laughed and said to me, ‘Why on earth would you let Vicki see Hugh Jackman without his shirt on? I can’t compete with that.’

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

RIDING THE GRAVITRON

In 2005, we had been putting up posters in the toilets outside the AFI Awards. A year later we attended the AFIs in another capacity. In the Feature Film category Clayton and Rohan had been nominated for Best Film, Dad for Best Supporting Actor Role, Clay for Best Direction, Sean and Clay for Best Editing, Clay and me for Best Original Screenplay, and me for Best Lead Actor.

Unfortunately for the family and the rest of the team, I was the only one to take out an award that night, with Best Lead Actor in a Feature Film. I was shocked; I was up against three great actors: Gabriel Byrne, Heath Ledger and Steve Le Marquand, so I never thought I’d win. When Cate Blanchett was standing on stage reading out the nominees and said, ‘The winner is …’ and my name came out of her mouth, it felt exactly like going on the Gravitron. There are fancier versions of that ride now, but when Mum used to take us kids to Luna Park it was literally an empty round room. You’d walk through the door and stand against the wall, then the room would start to spin. Once it reached a certain speed the floor would drop from beneath your feet.

Somehow I knew I had to get up and head to the stage. As I was walking up there my mind was racing because I hadn’t prepared any sort of speech; the only thing that had passed through my mind in those ‘what if’ moments was to make sure I thanked all the people who contributed to the film who usually don’t get thanked. I figured that of course I’m going to remember to thank Clayton and Glenn Preusker, so I’d save them until last but make sure I thanked everyone else first before I got the signal to leave the stage. So that’s what I did. When I got all the way through, my brain was exhausted from thinking of all the people I had to thank and I’d forgotten the very point of the plan, which was to leave Clay and Glenn until the end. My brain told me, ‘Okay, that’s everyone,’ and I said thank you and walked away from the lectern. At the very moment I reached the back curtain I realised I’d forgotten to thank the two most important people in the project: my brother, who had written the film with me, directed it on his own, shot it, produced it, edited it, and every other thing in between. And Glenn Preusker, who gave us the backing and the support in every possible way to make this film happen. I just couldn’t believe it.

I walked through the curtains to see some of my mates from my lighting and rock ’n’ roll days standing there, all looking at me and going, ‘Jaco [as they called me], you’ve just won a bloody AFI Award, mate, you ripper!’ I’m looking at them and saying, ‘I didn’t thank my brother, I didn’t thank the investor.’ They weren’t paying any attention; they just kept saying, ‘Well done, mate.’ Deb came backstage and I said to her, ‘I didn’t thank Clay. Please go get him.’ Clay came backstage and I began to apologise and he said, ‘Mate, you’ve got an AFI Award in your hand and Cate Blanchett and Geoffrey Rush are over there waiting to have their photo taken with you for the press. Who cares about the speech, bro.’ But I couldn’t forgive myself for leaving out the two people I’d so much wanted to thank.

Kenny went on to win a bunch of other awards, and I scored a couple more along the way too: there was the Film Critics Circle of Australia Award for Best Actor — Leading Role and Best Screenplay for Kenny, then at the Inside Film Awards it won Best Feature Film, and Clay and I won Best Script. You’d think with all of that recognition that the confusion over whether Kenny was real or not, and whether or not I was, in fact, a plumber would be dispelled. Not so. We’re not just talking about one or two people; even now, there would be a very large percentage of people in Australia who think that I was a plumber before I was an actor or that Kenny is real.

A friend of Mum’s once introduced her to another lady at a social event. While the three of them were chatting, this lady mentioned Kenny, and Mum’s friend said, ‘Actually, Jill is Kenny’s mum.’

The other lady looked puzzled. ‘You’re Kenny’s mum?’

‘Well, my son is Shane Jacobson, who played Kenny,’ Mum explained.

‘No, I’m talking about Kenny the toilet man, the plumber,’ this lady said.

‘Yes, I know, that’s the same Kenny,’ Mum replied.

‘I think you must be talking about someone else. You can’t be Kenny’s mum — I watched the documentary and his mother is dead.’

‘In the film Kenny’s mum is dead but I’m Shane’s mum in real life.’

‘No, I think you’ve got him confused with someone else,’ the lady said again.

At that point, Mum said, she wasn’t willing to keep arguing the fact that I was her son, that she hadn’t mistaken me for someone else, and that she was in fact not dead. But that was how strongly some people felt about it.

Just two days after getting off the AFI Awards Gravitron, Deb, Clay, Rohan and I were on a plane to Los Angeles, looking to land a sales-and-distribution deal for Kenny in America. Clay and I were also on the lookout for agents, so we lined up many, many meetings between us.

Before we left to go to meetings, Deb had one piece of advice for me. ‘Just do me a favour. Do yourself a favour. Don’t say anything crazy in these meetings. Just try to be normal.’

Deb and I walked into one meeting with an agent whose office looked like 1970 had collided with 2020 in the time machine. There was a lot of leopard skin going on, he had an assistant called Daisy, and I figured, ‘This guy looks groovy. He’ll be up for anything.’ So I relaxed a little and we talked for a while about what he could offer me, what my skill set was, Kenny and how it was going, the industry, and my views on various things. Eventually he said to me in his thick American accent, ‘Shane, what is it you want out of the film industry here in Hollywood?’

I had already forgotten Deb’s advice to say nothing insane. ‘I just want to make enough money eventually to be able to get to the moon to see if you guys have a flag there. Because I’m still a little bit suss as to whether you guys actually got there or not.’

There was around ten seconds of silence. The agent looked at Daisy, at Deb, at me, then gradually an expression came over his face that seemed to say, ‘I think that might be funny.’

Afterwards that agent seemed pretty keen on taking me on, but we decided not to go with him, knowing that he couldn’t quite figure out how to get a smile to make its way from his brain to his mouth. Eventually, though, both Clay and I found the agents that were right for us. Many months after that first trip to LA, our agents in Australia and overseas arranged for Clay and me to return to LA and meet with all the major studios. Sony, Universal, Disney, Paramount — all these film companies wanted to speak to Clayton as a director and me as an actor.

I can’t honestly remember if Deb had renewed her advice to me about not saying anything crazy. I’m pretty sure she didn’t offer that advice to Clay. What I do remember very clearly is sitting in a meeting with one of the major studio executives and him asking us, ‘How are you guys finding it here in Hollywood?’

‘It’s great,’ Clayton said. ‘People have been wonderful and very friendly, much more helpful than we would have expected. So what we do to get ourselves prepared for all the meetings we’re having each day is — we’re sharing a hotel room — so every morning before we get dressed we take turns bending over and we blow hot wind up each other’s arses with the hotel hair dryer, and we find that pretty much gets us in the right mood for coming to these meetings.’

No smile. The studio executive looked at his assistant, looked at Clay, looked at me, and then eventually said, ‘Oh my God, that’s funny, that’s funny.’ He turned to his assistant again, still without a smile, and said, ‘That’s funny. You should write that down. That’s funny.’

‘Really?’ I said. ‘You should probably tell your face about it.’

Another pause before he blinked and said, ‘That’s funny.’ Still no smile had arrived on his face.

At that point I thought, ‘Maybe not all the humour in Kenny will work here.’

While in LA we stayed in Santa Monica at the Best Western. At least, that’s what the sign at the front insisted — but I have to be honest, I’ve seen westerns before and I’m pretty sure this wasn’t the best. If this was the best, the worst would be something to behold. It should perhaps have been called an OK Western, but the truth was that no one had a cowboy hat, no one had a gun, so it was at best an OK Hotel. We found out that the internet reception was pretty bad and there was no alcohol on site, so it would have been more precise to call it an Okay Hotel With Not a Lot to Drink and Shit Internet Reception. But I digress.

When I won the AFI Award for Best Lead Actor, the winner of the Best Lead Actress Award was Emily Barclay. For a while we did a lot of events together: we would turn up at parties and there would be a photo shoot with the two of us. I spent a bit of time with Emily and we became great mates. At the same time that Clay and I were going back and forth to America, Emily was over there too, trying to get her foot in the big Hollywood door.

One night Emily and I went out to have something to eat, while Clay stayed in the hotel room trying to beat the internet into submission so he could send an email to Mori, who had played the Japanese businessman in Kenny. It was almost two years since we’d filmed those scenes in Nashville, and that was the last time I’d seen Mori. But he and Clay stay in touch by email, Clay giving him updates on how things are going for us and finding out what is happening in Mori’s world. So Clay was trying to email Mori to tell him how well the film was going and that he was now in LA with Rohan, Deb and me, looking to pick up an American distributor and agents.

Not long after Clay pressed ‘send’, an email came back from Mori saying, ‘Really, you’re in America? I’m in America at the moment too. Whereabouts are you?’

‘Currently staying in Santa Monica,’ Clay wrote back.

‘Really? I’m in Santa Monica! Where are you in Santa Monica?’

‘We’re staying at the Best Western on Ocean Avenue.’

‘I’m at the Best Western on Ocean Avenue,’ Mori replied. ‘What room are you in?’

‘I’m in room 214 on level two.’

‘I’m in room 204 on level two. Walk out your front door.’

Clay walked out the door of his hotel room and into the hallway and there was Mori, in America, in the same hotel, on the same day.

Rohan and Deb were around too so they knew Mori was there, but I was still out having dinner. If Clay was willing to pull a trick on our sister when she was a kid having a slumber party, he sure as heck was willing to pull a stunt on his brother while we were in a hotel in America. The four of them set up a cunning plan.

The next morning Rohan, Clay, Deb and I were scheduled to meet outside our rooms at eight a.m., ready to head off to a bunch of meetings. The four of us all had rooms in a row, so we met up in the hallway. Clay asked me, ‘Is anything missing from your room, bro?’

‘What are you talking about?’ I asked him. Rohan and Deb were looking puzzled too.

‘One of the Kenny dolls was stolen.’ We had brought six of these dolls with us; each one stands about half a metre tall, and when you squeeze its hand it says different lines from the film such as ‘There’s a smell in here that will outlast religion’ and ‘It’s as silly as a bum full of Smarties’. They were gifts for the studio heads but we could only fit two or three in a big suitcase. We had to sacrifice quite a lot of our luggage space for these dolls; we had one entire suitcase filled just with Kenny dolls, shirts and hats.

‘You’re kidding!’ I said.

‘Nah, I had it sitting beside my bed.’

Everyone’s getting worked up and saying, ‘No, no, I don’t think anything’s been stolen from my room, I don’t think so.’

I started to doubt myself. Should I go back and check to make sure my passport was in that hidden sleeve in the suitcase lining, and that extra change I had hidden in a little gap under the cupboard was still there?

‘It’s got to be the cleaning staff,’ I finally said. ‘The only people that would have been in our rooms were the cleaners. Was your room made up?’ I asked Clay.

‘Yes, my room was turned down last night, but I only noticed this morning that the doll was missing.’

‘Well it has to be them. Is there any money missing?’

‘No,’ Clay said.

‘Well, I reckon they’ve taken it knowing that there’s a few and thinking maybe we won’t notice. We’ve got to go and speak to the management.’

Just then, from around the corner in the hallway, I hear my voice coming out of what is undoubtedly a Kenny doll. Clear as day I can hear, ‘It’s as silly as a bum full of Smarties.’ My head snapped around in the direction of the sound.

‘I can hear it!’ I charge off, thinking I’m going to find a cleaner or someone hiding the doll in a cupboard. In true Jacobson style I tear around the corner ready to tackle whoever it was, incensed by the injustice of them taking something from us that wasn’t theirs.

As I round the corner there is a man standing there holding a Kenny doll in front of his chest with a smile on his face, but I wasn’t looking at the smile, I was running at the man. As I got closer and closer Mori said, ‘Shane, Shane, it’s me, it’s me!’ clearly thinking, ‘This guy’s not going to stop running until he bowls me over.’

At the last second I looked up and realised that I recognised the face: it was Mori. He burst into laughter and so did everyone else. They had me fair and square.

In the United Kingdom we took a similar approach to what we had done in Australia with screenings and personal appearances. For four weeks I drove the length and breadth of the United Kingdom, from London in the south-east up to Edinburgh and through other towns in Scotland, promoting Kenny. I was assigned a remarkable driver by the name of George, who was the spitting image of Alfred Hitchcock.

No matter what time I got up — it could be five in the morning to do an interview on breakfast radio — George would be waiting out the front, never late, always on time, standing there in his suit ready to open the door, and quite often with a coffee in his hand for me. ‘Good morning, sir,’ he would say every morning.

George became someone very special in my world. Deb, Clay and Rohan were with me for the first days of the tour but then they went back to Australia and it was just me and George. It’s a lonely old world when you’re working far from home. Normally when I do a press tour Deb is with me all the time, but this one time I was on my own with a driver. So George became my best buddy for those weeks on the road in the UK.

We travelled together for a month solid before the official film premiere, but George had never been in to see the film himself because he was always outside waiting for me. After a performance I had to be able to walk out of the cinema and get straight in the car and George would always be exactly where you wanted him to be, and if not there, somewhere closer. He was willing to do anything; I think he would have driven up the steps of a church if it saved me a two-metre walk.

So a few days before the premiere I said, ‘George, you’ve become a friend now. I don’t want you to drive me to the premiere, I want you to be at the premiere as my guest.’ It took a great deal of convincing, but in the end George agreed that he would come and bring his sister, and he arranged for a friend of his to drive them there in George’s Mercedes.

The premiere was at the Odeon cinema in Leicester Square in the heart of London, which was a particular thrill because that’s where so many of the big blockbuster films open. Odeon had organised for Rod Stewart’s daughter to be Kenny’s date for the night. Kimberly Stewart was known as a party girl, a friend of Paris Hilton, so that was big news.

As people arrived for the premiere, the searchlights were crossing the sky and the crowd barrier was up with some Australians there screaming ‘Kenny, Kenny, Kenny!’ and a bunch of English onlookers as well. A song from the Kenny soundtrack was booming across Leicester Square: ‘Taking Care of Business’. Norman Parkhill, who was in charge of the music for Kenny, secured the rights to record this song as the signature track for the film. Richard Pleasance, formerly from Boom Crash Opera, played most of the instruments for the track and did the lead vocals, but the backing tracks are sung by me. It’s something most people wouldn’t even notice, but for me it was a nice touch to have that song echoing across the forecourt of the Odeon in Leicester Square.

I arrived in Leicester Square in a massive pump truck, in character as Kenny in my overalls, just as Kimberly Stewart stepped out of her limo. I walked through the front door with Rod Stewart’s daughter on my arm, the cameras flashing, and there to walk the red carpet and say hello were several cast members from Neighbours, who were appearing across the road in a comedy play called Vegemite Tales. I walked up the red carpet and in the foyer, standing next to Clayton, was Barry Humphries, the very man who had been such an inspiration to us. Here was my chance to meet him, but of course I couldn’t break character because of that very rule we’d set, based on the very rule that Barry had set for himself. And that’s how Kenny and Clay got to meet Barry Humphries but Shane missed out.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE SHOW’S ON THE ROAD

It was never my dream to act in one film. Not even if that one film was a massive success. My dream was to make my living by acting, and to do only that. After all the Kenny madness, what I wanted to know was: is that it? Is there more? Can I make this my life?

Part of the answer came in March 2007 when I was invited to participate in the celebrity Grand Prix race in Melbourne. That was the first time I realised that a) I was being seen as an actor, and b) I now had a recognisable head. Those two factors were giving me an opportunity to partake in another dream: driving a racing car, albeit just a fairly standard BMW, around a Grand Prix circuit.

Together with people like Hamish and Andy, Layne Beachley, Kelly Slater, Sarah McLeod, Jules Lund, Daniel MacPherson, Dean Geyer, Peter Morrissey, Brooke Hanson, the late delightful Clinton Grybas and many more, we got a week’s race training out at Sandown Raceway. The organisers said it was one of those groups where everybody clicked, and if you’ve ever done anything that brings a group of strangers together for a week of intense activity and collaboration, you’ll know that is not something to take for granted, especially with celebrities. One of the great people out there was Brant Webb, one of the miners who had been trapped underground at Beaconsfield. Brant and I got along like two doves at a peace conference. When we headed back to the hotel after a day’s driver training, at some point I would invariably end up having a beer and a chat with Brant and his lovely wife Rachel. It had been less than a year since the Beaconsfield mine disaster and he was telling me the most incredible stories from that time. I listened to them, not knowing that years later I would be playing Brant Webb in the telemovie Beaconsfield.

Another dream come true was doing the week’s training with Allan Moffat. This is a man who has won Bathurst, the Australian Touring Car Championship, the Sandown 500 — all multiple times. At one point I was driving around a racetrack hearing Allan Moffat’s voice on the intercom in my helmet saying in that ever so recognisable Canadian tone, ‘That’s great, Shane, good race line, stay a little bit tighter.’ ‘Oh my God,’ I was thinking, ‘I’m behind Allan Moffat in a car on a racetrack and he just said my name.’ I had to pinch myself. There were no cameras trained on me waiting for me to be funny, I was there to learn something and have some fun along the way. It was as if the industry was giving me a gift.

If there was a game plan in my mind after Kenny, it was to make sure I was building a path to a future of professional acting. I was keen to show I could do other things, not just comedy. The thing about Kenny that people didn’t get, by and large, was that it wasn’t really a comedy, not in the sense of a bloke reeling off jokes: ‘Did you hear the one about …’ Most of it was quite serious, but people tend not to notice the dramatic acting in it, so I had to show that I was capable of that. The strategy I had was to show the world what people in Gang Show already knew about me, which was that I sing, I act, I dance, I do comedy and I can do drama. As it was, some people didn’t even think I could act because they thought I really was a plumber called Kenny, so starting from that baseline I had quite a bit to prove.

With so much to do and so much to prove, I certainly wasn’t looking for a relationship. Wasn’t looking for anyone at all. In April 2007 I was asked to go to Sydney and present an award at the ASTRA television awards, and after the ceremony I went along to the backstage VIP after party. Kenny had not long been out, so if I went to a function or a party, people were very keen to have their photo taken with me. Once a few people saw others having their photos taken with me it resulted in a bit of a line-up happening. I was pretty much standing in one spot for almost an hour and didn’t really get a chance to mix with many people. After that had gone on for quite a while, I went over to the bar and grabbed a drink. But before I’d moved too far from the bar I was stopped again by people wanting their photo taken with me. I kept putting my drink down so I wasn’t drinking in their photos, so for quite some time I was standing in that new spot, not getting a chance to wet the windpipes, but getting plenty of shots taken.

I was considering leaving the function and heading back to my hotel room when a girl came up to me and said, ‘I’m so sorry I had my photo taken with you.’

I really didn’t know what she meant by that, so I said something noncommittal like, ‘Oh, fair enough.’

‘I don’t usually ask to have my photo taken with people,’ she went on, ‘but my brother and the rest of my family really loved your film so I just wanted to have a photo of you and me to show them. I don’t think I’d ever do it again though, because I’ve noticed that you’ve done nothing but stand there and smile at the camera for strangers. You’ve been so polite about it.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. We started to chat. I found out that her name was Felicity. One conversation led into the next, into the next, into the next, and before I knew it we were being tapped on the shoulder and told that it was time for us to vacate the function. Time had flown. I honestly thought only 30 minutes had passed but when we looked around, the last people were leaving the party. Felicity was with a group of friends who were going to a place around the corner for another drink. ‘I’ll let you go — unless you’re up for joining us?’ I did that and again we chatted away, not realising the hours were passing until it was time to leave.

When we met, neither of us was looking for a new relationship. Felicity had recently suffered the loss of her husband and I had been through a breakup with Kellie not long before. We were navigating successfully through that, trying to make sure I spent as much time with my son as I could while working very hard on my career. There really seemed to be no room for anything else at that point in my life, and Fliss (as she is affectionately known) was not looking for romance either. But love found us, despite it all.

Ever since that conversation Fliss and I have been together. On the wall of our home hangs a photograph of the very second we met. There we are, standing side by side and smiling, not knowing that moment captured was not going to end any time soon.

As a performer, one thing you have to keep a constant check on is your work–life balance. That idea of balance seems wrong to me for a start: it’s not as if you have work at one end of the seesaw and life at the other end, because that’s never going to work. If you stack heaps on one end, whatever is on the other end of the seesaw goes flying, but if you put everything in the middle you can get much more on. Even so, the nature of this business is that filming can happen day or night, weekdays or weekends. You work odd hours and a lot of your time is not your own. It’s a demanding industry, and 24/7 isn’t enough for the number of projects that can come through the door. That’s the juggle, and what I find is that if you keep introducing more balls, you just have to juggle much, much faster. Right now I’ve got ten balls in the air, and every now and then one hits me right in the centre of the forehead, but I have to make sure I don’t blink for too long or the other nine will come crashing down too.

Recently I’ve had to cancel five holidays in a row, all for different reasons, so I know I have to get better at the balance thing. I also know that I’ve never, ever, heard a person say, ‘I wish I’d spent more time at work and less time with my children.’ I don’t want to undervalue work because without your work sometimes you don’t exist as a person. We try to find creative solutions to achieving the perfect mix. Clay and I have a speedboat together and just recently we went waterskiing for a few days. That felt like the first time in a long while I’d done something completely normal, just sitting on the edge of Lake Eildon, covered in sunscreen with our hats on, swimming in the water with the kids. I want more of that and more camping too. As I write this book I’m about to go and race a car at Bathurst, which is a lifelong dream to race on the mountain, so I’ve found another pie to dip my finger in. But we’re turning it into a road trip for the family by driving up there in a campervan. I hope to keep finding more ways like that to do the things that are relaxing for all of us.

As well as Fliss and the kids, I have cousins I’d like to see more, and great friends that I don’t see anywhere near enough of. The one time that Clay and I piled everything right in the middle of the seesaw — work, family and friends all in together — was when we made Kenny’s World. Before there was ever a thought of making a feature film called Kenny, the producer, Rohan Timlock, had the idea of sending this character Kenny on a tour, looking at toilets and meeting other toilet practitioners around the world. Because of Kenny’s soft, gentle personality, Rohan felt you could send him around the world to engage with people and he would get the best out of them. It wouldn’t matter where you were or whether people could speak English as their first, second or third language or not at all, Kenny’s demeanour would enable him to connect with people.

Channel 10 loved the idea, so after all the feature-film madness, we formed a company called Thunderbox Television and the ball started rolling again. Deb, Rohan, Clay and Nicole Bardy, our production assistant, set up an office and the Kenny staff were fired up once more, along with Ray Boseley, who came in to work with Clay on writing Kenny’s World. Ray, of course, was Clay’s old buddy who made those films that we watched on a bedsheet beside the caravan.

While I was touring and promoting Kenny in England, back in Australia this team of people were preparing a world tour. By the time I got home at the end of September 2007, we had only two weeks before we set out to visit 28 cities across fifteen countries. Everyone agreed that we wanted to be home by Christmas, so we decided to do whatever it took to finish filming by then. What this meant was that we filmed for just over eight weeks with only one day off.

We visited Japan, England, France, Italy, Germany, China, Thailand, India, the United States, Sweden, Denmark, Egypt, Russia, Singapore and Luxembourg. We were flying at least three or four times every week, with one or two domestic flights and at least as many international flights. It was great not only to bring our Kenny family back together again but to travel the world together.

However, Clay is not a good flyer. He would prefer to walk, paddle, swim, canoe, catch a train or a bus or be dragged behind a ute — anything other than catch an aeroplane. He doesn’t think those things are supposed to be up there; he reckons they are pretty much an accident waiting to happen.

Because Clay’s brother-in-law John Musso is a pilot, Clay knew way too much about the hazards of flying. According to Clay, you only know the pilot is convinced that everything is fine up front when the bell sounds over the intercom and the seatbelt sign goes off. Clay and I would sit together, and every time that bell dinged Clay would grab me on the knee and say, ‘Good, good, good, that’s very good.’ Every time a plane would land Clay would clutch my knee again and say, ‘We got away with another one!’

Fortunately Kenny seemed to draw in some gentle souls and quiet achievers who were a calming influence on us all. Sean Lander, the editor, is one; someone who relies on his actions to speak for him far more than his words. My dad gave me a great picture when I was young, showing an Indian chief looking at a young warrior and saying, ‘’Tis better to have less thunder in the mouth and more lightning in the hands.’ That’s Sean Lander.

That tour was a remarkable combination of sheer hard work and good fun, but it was not easy for the crew. Filming was non-stop because we had so much to capture and so little time to do it. Before we had headed off on the world tour, Clay and I had already done some filming at the Munich Oktoberfest. Clay, Vicki and their son, Jesse, had come over to the UK for the Kenny premiere, which was at the same time as Oktoberfest, so we all shot over to Munich. Clay and I spent two days filming at the event. When we’d finished, Clay turned to me and said, ‘What do you say we put the camera down and pick some beers up?’ Sitting there and drinking a beer together was one of the few moments we got to rest amid the madness of it all and enjoy time together just as brothers in a foreign country, invisible to the locals, and truly to take a moment to reflect.

Another brief moment to pause came when we got to Sweden. I was able to catch up with Annika, my girlfriend from all those years before. By then we both had children, so we spent a happy few hours or so exchanging family stories.

Dad had never travelled outside Australia apart from one family holiday to New Zealand in 1969. Apparently I was there too but I didn’t get much of a view of anything because I was still in Mum’s belly. ‘Wouldn’t it be great to have Dad meet us in one of these cities and be a part of the TV series?’ Clay said to me before we left. He had an image in his head of Dad on the back of a camel dressed in Arab clothing, so he organised for Dad to meet us in Cairo.

Deb had stayed in Australia so that we had someone in the Thunderbox Television production office making sure things kept rolling, so Clay asked her if she would escort Dad over and work with us in Cairo. Dad must have been pretty excited about this plan because he took the time to learn some Arabic before he arrived. It was two in the morning when Clay, the crew and I flew into Cairo from London. Deb and Dad had already arrived at the hotel, but we went straight to our rooms to unpack our bags. There was a knock on both of our doors. We came out of our rooms simultaneously and there was Dad, dressed in a turban and a traditional galabiya robe, speaking to us in Arabic. Clearly he had moved on considerably from his little trip to New Zealand all those years ago. It was a marvellous thing to work alongside Dad, and that is one of the big things that excites me about my work now — having a chance to do what I love with the people I love. About four years later director Jeffrey Walker cast Dad alongside me in a role in the second Jack Irish telemovie, Black Tide, just because he also enjoyed Dad’s work as an actor.

Losing my bags became a sport for all the airlines we flew with. When we flew into Mumbai, we were waiting by the carousel for our bags. Our travel team was Clay, Sean, Rohan and me, as well as our researcher, Roland, who would travel one country ahead of us to make sure that everyone was prepped for filming. The airport had emptied and we were the only people left, standing there looking at a big red bag that wasn’t mine going around and around on the carousel. We were taking turns asking the staff, ‘Can we look in that bag? Whoever’s bag that is, they’ve got my bag. I have a big red bag similar to that but not the same.’ The conversation wasn’t going well, but after many hours of debating this point we had a call from Deb, who was by then back in Australia, saying, ‘I’ve just had a call from a woman at a hotel in Mumbai who has opened her bag and found a pile of overalls and your details.’ Happily we were able to race over to her hotel and swap bags. This happened so often and so consistently that in the end we decided we had to make sure we had enough gear in our carry-on bags to keep filming. We split the gear amongst our luggage: I carried lighting equipment, Clay and Sean both had camera gear and batteries, and Rohan had tapes plus a mixture of everything else. And I wore Kenny’s clothes because then at least I had my wardrobe. This perhaps helped to further cement the confusion in people’s minds. If we ran into other Australians on planes or at airports, they would clearly be thinking, ‘He’s really into this character.’ People would be going back home and telling their friends, ‘No, I think Kenny is real. I saw him on a plane in Egypt.’

My bag was also lost in Egypt, and in Russia. After spending about an hour talking to the Moscow airport officials about where my bag might be and that I really needed it and all of those things, we had pretty much given up and headed over to the customs counter to leave the airport, but they expected us to pay a small bribe. It’s never considered a bribe, of course, it’s just a bit of extra money for who knows what. Rohan pulled out all the appropriate paperwork, all the letters that we had signed and everything that was required — but no, the officials indicated, there’s more money that needs to be paid. We lay down and went to sleep in front of the customs counter for three or four hours before they realised we couldn’t or wouldn’t pay the bribe, and we were eventually let out of the airport but I didn’t get my bag until two days later.

Apart from bribes, the biggest hit to our budget in Russia was a three-day cosmonaut training program that Clay, Rohan and Deb had organised for me. It was one of many remarkable things that I had a chance to do on the Kenny’s World tour: I got to lasso a deer, ride across frozen lakes in a dog sled, chisel a toilet out of ice, attend a concert in an underground sewer, ride camels in the Sahara with Dad and Clay, and eat foods in China that can only be described as indescribable. My stomach had a serious argument with me about that.

Standing by the Sphinx and interviewing the ‘real Indiana Jones’ would take some beating. As a small contingent of foreign nationals carrying cameras, the Egyptian government provided us with our own security guard. This stern-looking man could have stepped out of a Hollywood movie: he had the reflector sunglasses and the sharp suit, and every now and then his jacket would lift to reveal the Uzi strapped to his back. I can’t speak for the rest of the film crew, but I felt important knowing that wherever we went a guy with a machine gun travelled with us. Until we went to interview the head of antiquities at the Cairo Museum. She had four men with machine guns around her, which kind of outdid our one guy. All of a sudden I didn’t feel like I was that important in Cairo.

I met Zahi Hawass, the man they call the ‘real Indiana Jones’, at the very foot of the Sphinx. That particular spot is a no-go zone for the general public nowadays, but we were allowed to be there because of this man, who was then Egypt’s Minister of Antiquities and an enthusiastic Egyptologist. We arrived at the designated meeting place to find Zahi Hawass already there, accompanied by about 40 guys with machine guns.

Our one guy with a machine gun was now about as impressive as a karaoke singer at an AC/DC concert.

With touring for Kenny plus the Kenny’s World trip, I’d been out of Australia for eight of the past nine months. Most of what occurred in my life that year happened when I was in a plane, just getting out of a plane, or about to get on another one. In America, one of those significant events was a phone call from Bryan Brown saying, ‘I’m casting a small role in a new Australian film called Cactus and I’d love you to be in it.’

I was as happy as a pig in a pig, which I am pretty sure is the happiest pig of all. I hadn’t long finished my last project and already here was a call offering me a film role. And for this one I wasn’t going to be in the overalls. And it was Bryan Brown calling. I hoped this would be a sign of things to come because you can’t help but worry, ‘Am I going to be perceived as a one-hit wonder?’ Clay has had many successes in directing, but Australian audiences had only seen me once. Would that be all they would ever see me in?

Soon after that I was asked to appear in a surfing film called Newcastle alongside people like Anthony Hayes, who I admire as a practitioner of the art of acting and I’m now proud to call a friend. In Newcastle I played a father to a young actor called Xavier Samuels, who has gone on to have a lead role in the third Twilight film and build a great career of his own.

Seeing the film roles start to come in, I was able to breathe easier. The conveyor belt had started to roll and I was on it.

As a kid one of my great pleasures was sitting with Dad watching The Paul Hogan Show. After Mum and Dad split up we’d spend Saturday mornings and a couple of weeknights over at Dad’s place; I would sit on the floor between Dad’s legs and we’d watch The Sullivans and The Paul Hogan Show.

Before Kenny, Deb had worked with Paul Hogan on the publicity for his film with Michael Caton, Strange Bedfellows. On our first trip to LA to get an agent, Deb rang Paul, who lived in Santa Barbara at the time. ‘I’m in America with the Jacobson brothers and Rohan Timlock who did Kenny,’ she told him. ‘It would be great if we could catch up with you and say hello.’

Paul had seen Kenny and loved it. Even so, he asked Deb, ‘They’re not tossers, are they? You know, those filmmaking tossy types?’

‘No, not at all,’ Deb assured him.

‘All right then, come on up.’

A few days later we drove to Santa Barbara and had lunch with Paul Hogan. Here was a chance to meet a man who was one of my heroes and he couldn’t have been nicer or more normal. Everyone says, ‘Be careful when you meet your heroes; they may not turn out to be as good as you want them to be.’ I’ve been fortunate to find the opposite to be true on many or most occasions.

By now I had got to know Dean Murphy, who directed Strange Bedfellows. One day Dean asked Deb, ‘Do you think Shane would like to do a film with Paul Hogan?’ Although we didn’t know it at the time, Dean had already asked Paul whether he would want to work with me, which made good sense because Paul would need to answer that question first. If Paul didn’t want to work with me, there’d be no point asking me. Before Deb had even got the whole question out I had said yes. Amazingly, Paul had already agreed too. I hadn’t even read the script at that point. The truth was, I would have dug a trench with Paul — I would have done anything, I just wanted to work with him.

Working on Charlie & Boots was a whole lot better than digging a trench. I got to travel from Warrnambool in southernmost Victoria, all the way to Cairns (which in the film we made out was Cape York), driving in a Kingswood with Paul Hogan. Could it get any better than that? I doubt it.

I love driving. And I mean anything. Be it slow for a long while or fast for a little while, any chance to hit the road in anything in any direction is as good as life can get. Many people argue that the problem with Australia is so much of it is covered with absolutely nothing, but for me that’s the best part of it, the isolation. You really feel like you are ‘hitting the open road’.

Charlie & Boots is a road-trip movie about a father and son travelling from the southernmost tip of Australia to the northernmost tip. The only way to make the film was for us to move all the cast, crew and equipment on the road.

I could write a whole book just about my memories of filming Charlie & Boots and the true characters we met in the outback. Some of the best stories revolved around the wonderful character that is Dean Murphy, who co-wrote and directed the film. The son of a dairy farmer, Dean has the heart and spirit of all good country folk. His wonderful dad passed away before Charlie & Boots was released. It was a great pity that he never got to see the finished film because so many funny stories or moments in the film are inspired by or based on him. Dean’s mother still runs the family farm near Yackandandah to this very day.

One of my greatest memories from making that film was when we were shooting a scene in a wonderful old town called Echuca, which sits by the Murray River that divides Victoria and New South Wales. The film crew had set up on the side of the road; Paul Hogan and I had to drive down the road away from the crew for a few blocks and then turn back and head towards the cameras. As we drove away, we had to stop at a set of lights. We sat there and an old car with an even older couple in it pulled up alongside us. The dear old lady in the car looked at me for a moment, then past me to Paul, and then back at me. I could hear her saying to her husband, ‘Kenny and Paul Hogan are in the car next to us.’ Right then the lights went green and I had to take off before her husband looked across; he was still busy saying ‘What?’ I am sure he must have thought his wife had lost a couple of slices out of her loaf that day. I do sincerely hope for that dear old lady’s sake that one day they saw a poster or something from the film to at least give her the chance to say, ‘I told ya.’

Working with Paul, kids would often come up and ask him questions. One day a young boy said to him, ‘I want to be an actor. What do I need to do to become an actor, Paul?’ The advice Paul gave was simple: ‘You need a thick hide.’ He explained to this boy that the thing he would encounter most, especially early in his acting career, was rejection. As an actor you need to understand that that just means you weren’t right for the role: maybe you were too tall, too thin, too big, your voice too deep, your eyes too small. It could be any of a number of things outside ability — although of course you might have done a bad job of an audition. They are a nerve-racking experience, so sometimes you do mess up and that’s just because of nerves. Auditioning is a form of competition, but it is completely different from a sporting competition. A golfer has to hit a small white ball a very long way in a very straight line and after doing that several times, he has to hit it into a small round hole. Acting is not like that. The holes are all different shapes and sizes. There are many different kinds of balls, and sometimes you’re not asked to hit a ball at all; you have to throw a stick over a fence instead. As you get older you learn that when you miss out on a part, it’s not necessarily your ability that is at fault; you may simply not have fitted that role. So Paul’s advice is spot on: you do have to have a thick hide. In boxing, you’ve just got to pick yourself back up off the canvas. In acting, success lies in realising you weren’t punched out at all, you were just told, ‘This isn’t the ring for you, but feel free to jump the ropes and have a go in the next one.’

When we were shooting a scene in Tenterfield, the Mayor and the townspeople let us use the local basketball hall for our meals, which was a treat after weeks of eating in a tent set up in a paddock. One day we had just finished filming for the morning, and while they were setting up tables and chairs and getting lunch ready, Paul and I went outside. Someone came out and told us, ‘Lunch is ready,’ so we walked into the hall. Two local kids were there playing basketball, and as we walked past them Paul and I said, ‘G’day kids, how’re you going?’ One of the kids called out, ‘Hey, Hoges, do you wanna have a throw?’ and he threw the ball to Paul.

Paul turned around and grabbed it and we kept walking away from the hoop, towards the tables that were now set up at the far end of the hall. By now we would have been a good fifteen metres from the hoop. Without even looking back, Paul threw the ball over his head. In a beautiful slow-motion arc, the ball flew up through the air and went straight through the basketball ring.

Those two kids’ jaws dropped to the floor. Paul still hadn’t looked over his shoulder. ‘Oh my God,’ I said.

‘Did that bloody thing go through the hoop?’

‘Yep — have a look at the kids.’

‘Nope. Never look back, keep walking, and never let ’em ask you to try it again.’

Sure enough the kids were calling out, saying, ‘Do it again, do it again.’

‘No,’ Paul said as he walked off. ‘Once is enough.’

I love the fact that in the town of Tenterfield, which is already famous enough as the home of Federation, Banjo Paterson’s birthplace and the town that Peter Allen sang about so beautifully, two kids are thinking, ‘He really is like Crocodile Dundee. That guy can do anything!’

In another town along the way, Paul and I were walking along the main street when we passed a mother and daughter. The girl yelled out, ‘Hello Crocodile Dundee!’ The mother cuffed her daughter on the back of her head. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ she scolded her. ‘His name’s not Crocodile Dundee, it’s Mick Dundee.’

And here was I thinking it was hard to shake the Kenny tag.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A HECK OF A RIDE

I’ve jumped out of an aeroplane with a parachute, I’ve abseiled face first down mountains in Switzerland, I’ve raced a car at Bathurst, I’ve walked along trusses suspended in mid-air, I’ve stood beside explosions of fireworks and on the edge of an exploding volcano in Vanuatu, and I’ve walked the Kokoda Track. But I’ve never found anything that matches the thrill of walking out on a stage in front of a live audience.

When you go out on stage and sing or dance or do comedy, you get fed by the audience. You’re after the clap or the laugh. I don’t know what it would be like in the entertainment business if the room remained completely silent and you never got to hear compliments or feedback — would we still get out there and sing and act? The fuel you get is the laughter and the applause. And the great thing is that you don’t have to wait until you’re a professional to get that fuel: you get clapped and applauded if you did well, so you get fed along the way. You can get rejected by an audience, by way of small or quiet applause, and in comedy the silence can be devastating. But it doesn’t take away all the applause you were given in the past; you’ve still got that, and that’s why you say, ‘I need to keep going because I want more of that.’ You keep trying and you do another good performance and then you get fed again.

When you perform live it’s like your boss turning up and handing you the money for each hour’s work as soon as you’ve done it. In traditional theatre, as soon as you finish a song or deliver a gag, or at the end of each scene, there’s a pause or a lull in the music and the audience applauds. Several times a night you walk off the stage to applause and then the whole night is capped off when you come out at the end and bow and the audience applauds again. With film, you tell a joke to a camera today and that joke doesn’t get told to an audience for maybe a year, and you’re not in the room with them to hear the laughter. Television is the same: it bounces around the world and gets thrown into a lounge room where there are three or four people watching it. You may have a collective audience of a million people, but you don’t get to hear them laugh out loud. It’s a very different thing but I do love them all. With film and television the ‘applause and praise pay’ is the same as theatre; you don’t get it delivered hourly, but it does come when you get stopped in the street and someone says, ‘We loved you in that film.’ It’s as if the applause comes one clap at a time.

I think of acting and singing and dancing as toys: if I don’t get to sing for a while, it’s like a toy I haven’t played with for too long, so I’m keen to get it out. One of the things that draws me to different projects is that need to take out the toys that haven’t seen the light of day for a bit. After Kenny came out I was keen to show I could do other things and bring a few different toys out of the box.

At the start of 2008 I got a call from my agent, Ann Churchill-Brown, saying, ‘You’re wanted for an audition for Guys and Dolls.’ Because of my history with Gang Show, this was an offer that really excited me. I had had a taste of film and television now, but theatre being my first love here was my chance to tread the boards once more. I wasn’t known as a theatre performer, so I was thrilled even to be considered for Guys and Dolls, which truly is one of the great stage musicals, as well as a film classic in the hands of Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons and Frank Sinatra.

I was up for the role of Nicely-Nicely Johnson, a part that had been played many years before by the amazing Ricky May. When Ricky May used to sing on Hey Hey It’s Saturday I would be riveted to the television. He was one of those guys you couldn’t take your eyes off. He had that gentle, loving way about him, very Kenny-like in many ways. You couldn’t help but want to hug the man. So to be considered for walking in Ricky May’s footsteps was truly thrilling.

I went along to the auditions at the Princess Theatre ready to sing ‘Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat’ as well as the title song ‘Guys and Dolls’. After I had done a vocal warm-up I met Jamie Lloyd, the director of the Australian production, and Howard Panter, the UK producer. Howard Panter is a very impressive man in the world of theatre; he has produced many shows worldwide and worked in management for the Rolling Stones before that. He’s a big, strong, imposing man, but his smile is very warming when it breaks through this impressive aura.

As we were chatting, Jamie and Howard said, ‘We’re so glad you can come in and audition — oh, and we see you’ve still got your facial hair.’ This was another of those moments where Deb’s advice of try and say normal things would have come in handy, however, ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘When you’re a little bit Rubenesque and you’ve got a face like mine — that looks like a dropped pie — you tend to put a bit of hair over it just to cover up the mistakes.’

It was then that my eyes delivered a note to my brain that said, ‘You may want to have Shane check his surroundings before he speaks again,’ and then I realised that I was staring straight at Howard Panter, the producer of the show, who has a goatee and is a large man exactly like me. ‘Ah, sorry, no offence intended,’ I said. Thank goodness he had a sense of humour and thought that was funny. I relaxed just a little and thought, ‘Great, we’re off to a good start. They’re laughing.’

I went over and stood on my spot, ready to sing my songs. The audition room couldn’t have looked more like a scene out of A Chorus Line if it tried. There was a long table that didn’t need to be anywhere near that long — everyone sitting there had about four metres of space to work in, which is always the case in theatre auditions. At least that’s how it seems to the eyes of the nervous performer standing up on stage.

I still didn’t feel quite as relaxed as I would have liked before I sang. As a Jacobson I, of course, know there is always room for humour. If you’re nervous, just find the comic angle. So once again I stupidly decided to ignore Deb’s advice. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I hope to be able to get through this song. I’ve had quite a lot of heroin this morning so I may throw up and I may fall asleep, but hopefully neither of those things will happen and I’ll sing the entire song.’

There were some very straight-faced people sitting at that very long table but, thank goodness, Howard Panter laughed again, which gave them all licence to laugh along too.

The singing itself seemed to go well, and then there was the long wait to find out if I got the role. Finally the call came to say that I was in, and that was a great feeling. I really wanted to prove to people that I could do theatre, and this was my chance to get on stage and sing as well as dance.

We did six months of Guys and Dolls in Melbourne, eight shows a week. I’d done a lot of amateur theatre before, but that was my first experience of the intense discipline that is professional musical theatre. Each show goes for three hours; with all the dancing and singing and sheer physical nature of the performance, it is like doing eight aerobics classes every week. But it was a fantastic experience, especially turning up to the first day of rehearsals and standing next to Marina Prior, the queen of Australian theatre, and Lisa McCune and Magda Szubanski and Ian Stenlake and the amazing Garry McDonald.

All up I worked on Guys and Dolls for the best part of a year, doing 250 performances. The show ran for twenty weeks in Melbourne, then we took it up to Sydney for a twelve-week season at the Capitol Theatre. It went down well with the reviewers and the audiences, and it was nominated for six Helpmann Awards in the musical category: Best Musical, Best Sound Design, Best Choreography, Best Direction, Best Female Actor and — for my role — Best Male Actor in a Supporting Role in a Musical. I went on to win that award, which was mind-blowing. It was an award I’d never even considered winning. One of the other great pleasures of that show was working alongside Troy Sussman, who had stood beside me on stage when I was ten years old in my first Gang Show dressed as a paper boy. It was great to step out on stage again with Troy and sing one of the opening numbers together, the same way we’d done all those years ago.

Working alongside Garry McDonald in Guys and Dolls was another of those pinch-yourself opportunities. There are only a very few people who have mastered the art of playing a character for real and never breaking out of it; Barry Humphries is one and another is Garry McDonald. I am a massive fan of his work as Norman Gunston. At one rehearsal, I was sitting not far from Garry when someone tried to pay me a compliment. ‘I can’t take this,’ I said. ‘That man there is one of this country’s pioneers of playing a character and never breaking it for a moment. He could interview the Rolling Stones and make them believe it was a real person.’

Garry McDonald went on to show me what a true professional he is. The amount of work he puts into fine-tuning his performance is just remarkable; he never stops. It was a quality I saw in other fine Australian actors again later when I worked on a play called The Drowsy Chaperone for the Melbourne Theatre Company, alongside a remarkable cast that included Geoffrey Rush, Robyn Nevin, Rhonda Burchmore and Troy Sussman again.

The Drowsy Chaperone was sold out and the season extended even before opening night. I’d like to think that was because I was in it, but I rather think it may have had something to do with Geoffrey Rush. I spent three months watching Geoffrey continually honing his craft. The people who are elite in their fields, whether they are Formula One drivers achieving millimetre perfection, football players, golfers, actors — the ones that truly excel are never there by chance. It’s through constant effort. Being able to watch the effort that Geoffrey put in every night, perfecting every breath, every word, every manoeuvre in his performance, truly was a blessing.

The idea of working alongside people like that really wasn’t on my radar when I was a kid with a dream of acting. It’s like driving: when you’re a teenager, you just want to get your licence. When you get that, you just want to own your first car. Then after a while, you want to get a better car. Once you turn 30, you end up with a family car because it makes sense. Then by the time you hit your mid-life crisis, all you want is a Ferrari. The goal changes. When I was eight, I would watch Young Talent Time and say to myself, ‘I want to be on that.’ When I got older, I wanted to be in a television drama or a movie. Then after I had been in my first movie, Hollywood became the next mountain to conquer. I’m sure Sir Edmund Hillary must have walked up a very small mountain once and decided that was a bit of fun before it became his mission to conquer greater heights. Initially my dream wasn’t about Hollywood at all: when you’re singing in a band and doing warm-up work, the idea of being able to leap into Hollywood is a bit of a pipe dream. As we know, dreams are usually something that you believe aren’t rooted in reality — that’s why they happen when you’re asleep, because you can’t make your dream happen when you’re awake.

I have a lot of dreams and they are very vivid, but in my mind I know the difference between a dream and an achievable goal. The idea of someone in Hollywood saying, ‘Hey, we just saw this kid in a West Coast jumper walking down the street in the western suburbs of Melbourne and he might make a good kid in a film’ — that just doesn’t happen. I think the kid in Terminator 2 was spotted by a casting director hanging out on the street, but the reason I know that story is because it’s so rare.

So I had dreams of being in a Hollywood movie, but it didn’t feel like reality initially. Once I started getting work in Australia and working with people like Paul Hogan and Guy Pearce and Hugh Jackman, I did think, ‘They’re at a much bigger party and I wouldn’t mind attending.’

I had the opportunity to audition for a small role in The Bourne Legacy, the fourth instalment in the Bourne series. One thing you learn in the acting game is no matter how confident you are about getting a role, you never have it until you’re standing there on set, all the cameras are pointing at you, and someone yells, ‘Action!’ Even then you can be cut out of the film. I had done many auditions and been assured that I’d nailed it, or even been offered a role, only for it to all turn to dust. Guillermo del Toro, the Academy Award-winning director, said that he wanted me to be in The Hobbit. He even sent me for dialect coaching. But Guillermo ended up not directing The Hobbit. Peter Jackson went on to do it and I didn’t end up in the film. The casting director for The Three Stooges, in which I was supposed to appear alongside Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro, rang me and told me I’d nailed the audition for that, but I didn’t appear in that film either. I’ve learned that you just have to keep taking the auditions, not getting too excited but making sure you are in the running.

I did my audition for The Bourne Legacy, deliberately not getting excited. Really wanting a role doesn’t mean you’ll get it or make you act better. In fact, sometimes the roles you get are the ones where you audition and go, ‘Maybe this isn’t really me. I’ll just do it my way and we’ll see what happens.’ You tend to be more relaxed then, which can help when you’re supposed to be looking very natural. At nine-thirty one night after a fourteen-hour day of filming on Beaconsfield, I went over to a small house in Yarraville to do an audition tape. I was led into what looked like the spare bedroom where a guy filmed me for fifteen minutes, which involved doing the scene a few times until I felt I’d got it right. Then I went straight home and kept learning my lines for the next day’s filming. Some while later I got a phone call to say that I had landed the role in The Bourne Legacy. If a mouse had coughed it would have been enough to knock me over: I honestly couldn’t believe I’d got it. It was one of those moments where I really didn’t expect to hit that hole in one, but maybe the absence of expectation went in my favour. Before you knew it, I was heading off to New York to start filming on the latest Bourne film.

I had to arrive in New York a few days before filming started so that they could spray-tan me an inconceivable shade of orange and bleach my eyeballs. Ridiculous, but true: they put a solution in my eyes to make them look whiter and brighter. On the first day of filming a driver picked me up at about two in the morning and we headed straight out to the location, the printing press where The New York Times is produced. Filming would start at four in the morning so we could be done and out of there before the presses started up again in the afternoon to print the next day’s edition. On set I was led to a semitrailer which had about eight sets of stairs along the side, each leading up to a separate compartment. I affectionately referred to these compartments as dog boxes: each was about a metre and a half wide, with a bench seat on one side, a little stereo like a car radio mounted in the wall, some hooks for hanging wardrobe, and a toilet at the other end. Down one side was a roller door, which could be opened up to make a double dog box. It was a little like an enlarged bus stop with a toilet at one end. When I walked in, my costume was already hanging on the hooks and the roller door had been put up, so I had two stereos, two benches and two toilets. A double-width dog box. It felt pretty cool to know that although I’m a nobody in America, I actually had a double dog box. I put on my costume, filled in some forms, was taken over to the makeup truck, then headed out on to set. We filmed for about four or five hours before we got to a break. There were hundreds of extras in the scene, all dressed in masks and a pink uniform, playing my staff. Off set, they were all accommodated in a large marquee like a massive circus tent.

When I came off set, the assistant who was assigned to me came across with a look on her face that said something had gone slightly wrong. ‘Shane, I’m sorry, there’s been a mix-up regarding your dressing room,’ she said. Looking increasingly embarrassed, she continued. ‘I hope you don’t mind but we’ve had to take your clothing and property out of there. I do sincerely apologise about that.’ At that point I realised I probably wasn’t supposed to have a double dog box.

‘No, no, that’s fine, I completely understand,’ I assured her and I started to head towards the marquee.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked me.

‘I’m going to the tent.’

‘No, this is yours over here.’ I looked across to where she was pointing: it was a massive semitrailer star wagon. It had its own makeup area, a wardrobe area, a bed and its own bathroom. And it was all for me.

‘I’m so sorry to have made that mistake,’ the assistant said again as she showed me my trailer.

‘Trust me,’ I assured her, ‘I was fine with that double box. To be honest, I was going to be happy with the tent. I’d sleep under one of these trailers. Back in Australia when I first started acting, if I had been told I was going to be in a trailer, it would measure six by four and there would still be some firewood in it.’

She laughed, but she said again, ‘I am so, so sorry.’

‘You never have to apologise again. I’m having a ball and I’m just happy to be here.’

And I was. Here I was acting in a Hollywood film, which was a dream come true. Although my role was a small one, I was in a scene talking on a phone to Edward Norton, as well as acting beside Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz, who is an Academy Award-winning actress. Pinching myself was not enough. If it could’ve been done without leaving marks, I would have punched myself.

If you had to reduce my point of difference as an actor to one thing, I think it is that I don’t have too many filters. Even though something might sound completely insane to say out loud, that doesn’t stop me saying it. People who know me are never surprised if I say something completely outlandish or pull a less than pretty face just for the sake of a laugh. As a performer, I try to follow Clay’s advice to give my audience the full palette: every colour I have, never sticking to black and white.

If I’m presenting at an awards night or I’m MC at an event, I ad-lib a lot and I am very much in the moment. When I go up to the lectern they have a thing called autocue with the words I’m meant to say showing on a screen. But I’m not necessarily going to stick to those words because I have no idea where my brain is going to take me. Once I get to a mic I never really know what’s about to fall out of my mouth. That frees me up, and I think that’s the secret. My brain very rarely lets me down; we have a lot of fun together. I could probably sit on my own in a room and burst into laughter every now and then at a thought I’ve had. I’m not sure everyone else can do that.

Theatre and filming are different, of course, but being in the moment comes in with both of them too. If you’re doing a scene with another actor and you’re supposed to be arguing with them, say, you have words that are delivered to you in the form of a script. Once you’ve learned those words you have to repeat them in front of a room full of other people, but more than that, you’ve got to live them in the moment. You have to tell yourself, ‘Now I’m having an argument with this person,’ or ‘I’m telling this person that I love them and they mean the world to me.’ You’ve got to imagine yourself in that space. When I’m doing a scene I tend to do what I would do in real life in that moment — no filters, whatever feels right at the time. I’m an animated person, so I use my hands and move around a lot, and that’s just me, the way I am.

That capacity to be in the moment was tested to the limits when I was filming the Beaconsfield telemovie.

Clay had long wanted to do a movie about the Beaconsfield mine disaster: he was intrigued by the story of the world converging on a quiet little town like Beaconsfield. In a town like that, if a tourist walks down the main street everyone around them knows they are a tourist because everyone else in town knows each other and they all know that person is the only new thing in town that day. Then in 2006, a small earthquake triggered a rock fall at the Beaconsfield gold mine, and suddenly the entire world was looking at Beaconsfield through a magnifying glass. Not only were the people of Beaconsfield going through something completely outside their experience, they all knew the men who were caught in that mine, as well as the people who were risking their lives to save them. Three men were trapped down there: Larry Knight, Brant Webb and Todd Russell. Brant and Todd were trapped for just over two weeks before they were rescued. Larry Knight didn’t come out of that mine alive, so now a woman is without a husband, their children are without a father, a family is without a son, miners are without a mate. As in all deaths, the ripples go wider and farther than the immediate waters.

When the Beaconsfield tragedy happened, people said they could see a resemblance between me and Todd Russell. I was often told, ‘Whenever they get around to making a movie about this, with your goatee you’re a lay-down misère to play Todd Russell.’

As it turned out, Southern Star and Channel 9 asked me to audition for a telemovie about Beaconsfield. I met Glendyn Ivin, the director, and found out he wanted me to audition for the part of Brant Webb. After talking with my agent I said to Glendyn, ‘Look, if the part you want me to play is Brant Webb, I’m going to turn it down. I’ve only ever imagined myself playing Todd Russell, so I don’t think I can get my head around the idea of playing Brant Webb.’

It took a while, but Natasha Harrison, an agent who was working with my agency at the time, talked me into it. I had to re-read the entire script and imagine myself as Brant Webb. In the end I said yes. To this very day I’m so glad I got a chance to do it because it was one of the most challenging roles I’ve ever had to play, and certainly the most moving. It was the first time I had been asked to play a real person, someone I had actually met, a man who had endured an inconceivable fourteen days of hell.

As I worked through the script I was able to ring Brant and talk to him about each and every moment and how he felt. One day I asked him, ‘If I was only allowed to ask you one question about being trapped in that mine and you were only allowed to give me one answer, what would be the one thing you would want to tell me?’

‘That I thought I was going to die every single second I was in that mine,’ he replied.

Hearing him describe the pain, the fear and the horror of every moment he was down there, the responsibility to tell this story well started to weigh on me. It had become more than acting. It was as if I was being handed a piece of Australian history and being asked to do more than look after it; I was being asked to recreate it. If someone said to me, ‘Here are Tutankhamun’s jewels, lock them away safely,’ I could do that. But we were being asked to rebuild them perfectly. And this wasn’t some artefact, these were human lives.

Being in the moment and imagining each one of those occurrences was the most emotionally draining thing I’ve ever had to do in my time in entertainment. In my mind, Lachy Hulme (as Todd) and I were showing what it was like to be trapped a kilometre underground with razor-sharp rocks hanging over us. People think that Brant and Todd were in a cage with a roof over it, but in fact they were on an open metal pallet with some side walls, and the rocks over their heads were just wedged together like a bundle of knives waiting to fall.

It was an incredible situation for Brant and Todd. In one scene we were talking about missing our children and saying goodbye to our families and I threw myself into it and dug deep into my emotions. When we finished filming, the director came over and said, ‘That was wonderful, but you were crying so much it was hard to understand the dialogue.’

People often say about an extreme experience, ‘I can only imagine what it would be like.’ Now I had imagined what Brant and Todd had been through and as difficult and heart-wrenching as that was, I knew that imagining it didn’t come anywhere near the reality.

When filming was complete we had a special screening at a cinema in Melbourne for the cast, the director and the production team. I sat beside Brant Webb and his wife, Rachel, and Todd and Caroline Russell. For the first time in my life I watched an entire movie next to the very person that I was playing. When it was over I saw Brant’s hand start to move towards me and I honestly thought, ‘I can’t believe it — he’s going to slap me, he thinks it’s that bad.’ In fact he was reaching across to shake my hand. ‘Well done, mate, well done. It’s great,’ he said.

I doubt that any other critique of my work will mean more to me than having the man whom I’d just played in a project like Beaconsfield shake my hand and say, ‘Well done.’

The one question I always get asked about Top Gear is whether it’s the dream job. It is. It’s someone else’s cars and someone else’s insurance, but it’s my hands and my feet and my fun and my time, and I get paid for it, so it really is the dream job.

The opportunity to be part of Top Gear came when I was invited to have lunch with some Channel 9 executives to celebrate completion of filming on a show that, as it so happens, never went to air. One of the station executives was saying she had just come back from England after doing a deal with Top Gear to produce the Australian version of the show.

There’s a segment on the English show called A Star in a Reasonably Priced Car. A celebrity comes on as a guest, the host Jeremy Clarkson interviews them, then they show footage of a lap the guest has done around a racetrack in a fairly standard car. I assumed Channel 9 had already cast their presenters for the Australian show, but I offered to be one of those guests when the show came to Australia. ‘Oh, do you like cars?’ the executive asked me.

‘Yeah, I own a few cars’ — at the latest count I owned seven of them — ‘and I raced at the Grand Prix Celebrity Challenge a couple of years back.’

‘Great! So you must have your CAMS licence as well as a normal road licence?’ she asked.

‘Well, yes, and I’ve got my motorbike licence — I used to race my motorbike on amateur days at Phillip Island racetrack, as well as racing amateur rally when I was younger. Then I’ve got licences for car, bus, heavy rigid and articulated semitrailer, scissor lift, boom lift, fork lift, jet ski, boat — pretty much anything that goes, I’ve got a licence to drive it.’

‘Well, we should have a chat with the executive producer of Top Gear and arrange a meeting,’ they said. I thought they were being very thorough, going to this kind of effort for the Star in a Reasonably Priced Car segment. But when I went to have breakfast with the executive producer it turned out that they actually wanted to chat to me about being the host. Before you knew it the job was offered to me and I was hosting Top Gear Australia alongside Steve Pizzati and Ewen Page, two terrific blokes who are now friends for life.

Apart from asking me whether it is the dream job, the other question people ask is, is it dangerous? Well, yes, and sometimes the dangers come from unexpected quarters. To kick off the series we went to England and filmed a special. We met with Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond, the three hosts of Top Gear UK, and they set us a series of challenges. One of them involved driving through the Knowsley Safari Park near Liverpool, where they have all sorts of animals: lions, rhinos, baboons. All of the visitors go through in their cars, but the difference for us was that we had to make sure the animals showed some interest in us, so the producers hung pieces of raw meat off the edge of my car, just out of sight of the cameras. That drew the attention of the lions. Then the producers scattered cashews around our cars in the baboon area and that got them interested. The baboons took a particularly strong interest in Steve, who was driving a Triumph TR-7 with a soft roof. Before we went through we had to screw chicken wire into the roof of his car to strengthen it, but the baboons pulled the chicken wire off and tried to get in. Steve made a very wise decision to drive out of the baboon area before one of them became the world’s most unwanted passenger. Then we went through the rhino and water buffalo area, where they were as interested in us as Keith Richards is in politics.

We were then presented with three identical cars called Peel P50s, the smallest cars in the world. They are literally one-seat cars with Perspex windows and a small electric motor that achieves a speed slightly faster than the walking pace of an elderly person the week before their hip operation. In these toy-like cars we had to go back through the same enclosures: the lions, the baboons, the rhinos, past some buffalos and a herd of bongos — a type of deer with massive horns that don’t make them look so dear at all.

The lions were used to hearing engines run and scenting an automobile’s petrol smell, but these little cars were electric so they were quiet, and they didn’t have that fuel smell. And they were tiny: I literally had to squat down to get in mine and I had a great deal of trouble getting out of it. When I’d driven through in a normal car with raw meat hanging off it, the lions had shown a bit of interest but they were very calm. When we went in driving the Peels, the lions clearly thought we were three predators trying to sneak up on them. At that point they became very, very interested in us indeed. The cars were red, so with me jammed inside the tiny vehicle, it looked like a meat-filled jaffa. They started surrounding us. I couldn’t see behind me, but a lion had got between me and Steve and Ewen. I kept going forward, but on my two-way radio I could hear one of the park officials saying in his bright and proper English accent, ‘For goodness’ sake, do not separate from each other.’ When he started to swear into the speaker, I figured this really wasn’t going to plan.

The park managers brought some four-wheel-drives in to drive alongside us and move us through. Once we were out of the enclosure and they commented that things had got a bit tricky, I thought, ‘Okay, I’m glad I survived that.’

That was as bad as it was going to get, I figured. Now we’ve just got to go in with the baboons. We drove in and immediately it was clear the baboons thought we were fascinating little targets. They jumped on the cars and started tearing bits off them. One leapt up on the front of my car and pressed his backside against the window. At the best of times a baboon’s backside looks like a handful of mince in a Glad bag, so that was pretty much unmissable. Clearly this baboon had seen some of my earlier work and decided to give me his critique.

On my left-hand side there was a very angry baboon exposing its teeth and growling at me. It grabbed the handle of the door but couldn’t immediately figure out which direction to turn it. Peel P50s don’t have locks on the doors, so I had to grab the handle and hold it shut — but not look down at the handle because baboons are smart animals and this one would realise it was on to something. So I grabbed the handle and looked the other way. As I looked out the right window I could see a baboon that clearly had no problem with my earlier work. He liked me far more than the guy with his backside on the front window and wasn’t as angry as the baboon working on the handle over on the left-hand side. In fact, the baboon on the right side of the car liked me a lot and was extremely busy showing me just how much.

This was getting a bit out of control, so we moved on from there. The next enclosure we had to go into was the rhino enclosure. When we made Kenny’s World we filmed a segment about the rhinos at the Werribee Open Range Zoo in Victoria. The segment didn’t make it into the final series but in the process of filming we learned a lot about rhinos, including the fact that they have incredibly bad eyesight but amazing hearing, and their sense of smell is something like 600 times keener than that of a dog (if that figure is wrong, then just trust me — it’s very, very good). They can smell even a small quantity of testosterone from a very long distance. At the zoo they keep the male rhinos entertained by putting female rhino poo in a bowling ball drilled with holes. The male rhino smells it, gets excited and comes over and plays with that bowling ball, which is the only thing that is strong enough to survive the weight of a rhino playing with it.

Knowing all these things didn’t help to steady my nerves as we drove our Peels into the rhino enclosure. There was a mother rhino in there with her young, and just like the lions, she thought we looked like predators sneaking up on her, with the added complication that she couldn’t really see what we were. We startled her so she swung around to assess us with her bad eyesight. Things went wrong very quickly then and on the radio we heard our English mate saying, ‘Do not move, do not move.’ We had to sit motionless in our cars for two or three minutes while the rhino rocked back and forth right in front of Steve Pizzati’s car, figuring out whether she was going to kill us or not. When the park officials felt she had stayed steady for long enough, they told us to drive off and go around her. It was without a doubt the most terrifying experience I’ve ever had in my life. I’ve bungee jumped from sixteen storeys off a tower in Las Vegas; I’ve ridden motorbikes at over 260 kilometres an hour; I’ve skidded sideways through forests in rally cars; I’ve spun a race car backwards off a track at well over 200 kilometres an hour; I’ve even said no to my dad once. None of those was even close to the fear that I felt looking into this rhino’s eyes and wondering whether she was going to kill us or let us go.

After facing death by rhino filming that first episode of Top Gear Australia in England, we came back to Australia and for two years on and off I worked on Top Gear. It was another moment when my dreams, my hobbies, my profession and my career all came together.

One of the problems with working on the show, though, was that orphans in the shape of automobiles kept following me home. It’s a habit I have. After I finished work on Charlie & Boots, I purchased one of the HJ Kingswoods we used in the film and an HQ Holden ute. On Top Gear Australia, we featured a Celica rally car that I purchased, then for another story there was a 1976 Kombi Campervan that we didn’t end up using, but I bought that. I built up quite a collection of automobile orphans.

For a couple of years I had a ball travelling all over Australia as well as New Zealand and England, driving all sorts of cars. I got behind the wheel of a Ginnetta F400, an E-type Jag, a seven-litre supercharged Blue Meanie Commodore, an Audi R8 Spyder, an FPV Falcon, a Supercar called a Redback Spyder, and a Lamborghini Gallardo that the owner let me thrash around a racetrack because he wanted me to have a go at his car — to name a few. Then an opportunity came to host Top Gear Live, the arena show, in Australia, with Jeremy Clarkson and James May. Channel 9 flew me to Ireland to do a story about it, which would also give me a chance to see the show. But because I was reporting, filming behind the scenes and doing interviews backstage, I didn’t get to sit down and watch the show from start to finish, or to take notes and really absorb it.

Top Gear Live came to Australia a few months later, starting off in Brisbane. I met up with Jeremy and James on the Gold Coast and we stayed at Palazzo Versace. We needed to work up some additional script to modify the show for Australia and to write some script for me. Apparently the Versace wasn’t quite conducive to script meetings, so one morning we went down to the wharf and got on an enormous multi-million-dollar super yacht. ‘We’re going to have a bite to eat, run through your lines and have a chat about the show,’ the assistant told me. The yacht set sail and we spent a few hours going through some lines and ideas. ‘Are you guys ready to go and see the venue and do a mic check?’ the assistant asked us after a couple of hours. We all agreed that was a good idea, so one of the crew spoke into a radio; minutes later a helicopter landed on the top deck. Jeremy, James and I hopped in and flew to the venue, where a golf cart picked us up to take us the last 150 metres to the stage door. Inside the venue, all the stunt drivers and lighting guys and producers and the sound team were working hard on getting everything set up for the show. Jeremy, James and I spent a few minutes doing a sound check, then when everyone was happy with that Jeremy said, ‘Great, we’ve got the rest of the day off — let’s go back to the boat, go for a swim, take a rest, and have a few drinks.’

As we were walking out of the venue, Jeremy stopped. He turned around and said to me, ‘Hang on a moment. Shane, you haven’t seen this show from start to finish yet, have you?’

‘No,’ I replied.

‘So you don’t really have an idea of how it goes. The first time you’ll get to see every bit of this show is when you stand in the middle of the arena with us in front of a live crowd.’

‘Yeah, pretty much so.’

‘Well, that’s not fair and that’s not right,’ Jeremy said. He turned to the producer and the show director and said, ‘Let’s run the show.’ With that, all the stunt guys got in their cars and off we went for a full run-through of the show. It says a great deal about Jeremy Clarkson that he would rather make sure I got a chance to run through the show once than spend a day lounging around on a very nice yacht, again proving it is no coincidence to find that level of professionalism in all those who have done well.

Travelling with the Top Gear UK team was very much like being on tour with the Rolling Stones: nice restaurants, fast cars and the flashing bulbs of the paparazzi. After we did the show in Brisbane the production team had to move all the trucks and cars and equipment down to Melbourne for the next show, so we were put on a private jet and flown to Hamilton Island, where we had four days to do as we pleased. The three of us each got a golf cart to drive around the resort. You could tell when Jeremy or James or I was coming because you could hear the screeching tyres. We discovered that the brand-new asphalt roads became like a skid pan after the tropical rain that happened most days, so we spent more time going sideways in our golf carts than we did going in a straight line. During the day we went out on the water on jet skis or sailing boats, then we would come back, freshen up and drive our golf carts up to the reception area to meet up and head out to dinner somewhere. I took great joy in hiding in dark driveways until I could hear the giggling and laughing and screeching tyres that announced James and Jeremy arriving. Then I’d fly out of a hidden driveway and ram them.

Later I did get a great deal of joy out of reading an article Jeremy wrote for Top Gear Magazine in which he said, ‘My colleague from Top Gear Australia, Shane Jacobson, would park his golf cart up a side street or in someone’s drive and then lunge out and T-bone passing traffic. On purpose. It was fantastic. One minute you’d be trundling along, and the next, you’d be spinning wildly into the weeds having been rammed by a red-faced man.’

I could have got used to that rock-star lifestyle, being flown everywhere by helicopter and private jet. At the end, when Jeremy and James and the Top Gear team jumped in a plane and flew back to England, the paparazzi disappeared too and life shifted gear pretty abruptly. I flew back to Melbourne and on my way home from the airport I got a text from Fliss saying, ‘Pls grab milk on yr way home.’ The rock-star life is fun while it’s happening but it does end quickly. Life goes back to normal, which in my view is not a bad thing at all.

One of my favourite sayings is ‘luck prefers a prepared mind’. It’s not in my nature to sit back or to be complacent about the future, so I keep trying to perfect and hone what I do. I still haven’t shaken that feeling that I have something to prove. Not so long ago I was thinking of taking on a particular project and I said to Deb and Felicity, ‘I should do that because it will prove to people that I can do this type of work and show a bit of variation. And I want to make sure that I’ve got work lined up in that month.’ They both looked at me and Fliss said, ‘You do realise the work does keep coming in? And that I think you probably have proven that point now? I don’t think you need to worry so much about whether you will get any more work; people in the industry know who you are now.’ Deb had tried to tell me that in many different ways in the past, but now I was hearing it from Fliss.

I can honestly say, where I stand right now on earth, my greatest dreams of acting have come true. I am beyond stoked that I am now doing drama and comedy, and that I get a chance to do film, television acting and presenting as well as theatre and my live corporate MC gigs and keynote speeches. People often ask me, ‘If you had to choose a favourite, which one would it be?’ I always answer that I have already chosen: I’ve chosen all of them. I don’t think that makes me greedy, but it does make me busy and also very happy.

The best thing of all is that it hasn’t been a one-off. The dream I held as a kid all those years ago, of making my living by acting, has come true. And all those wonderful distractions that took me away from acting have, in fact, played their part in bringing me to where I stand today. Every metre travelled down a dirt track when I should have stayed on the highway heading towards the city called Entertainment has led me through potholes which made me swerve and end up in a paddock — and I was always one of those kids who, once they’re in a paddock, can’t help but play there.

The rough road I chose to take ultimately got me to my destination; it just took a lot longer. But it’s been a heck of a ride.

POSTSCRIPT

THE GREATEST DRAMA OF ALL

As my brother often says, one thing all humans need is someone to witness their life, a companion who will witness your triumphs as well as your failures, someone who will pick you up and hold you in defeat but also hold you in victory. I have found my soul mate, my buddy and my companion, and it makes the victories all the more satisfying knowing I have someone to share them with.

Fliss is not only my rock, she is the cliff beneath my rock, the sand on the shore and the water that keeps me floating. She is my centre pole and all of the guy ropes holding me up in any weather. Fliss is without doubt my right arm — both of my arms, in fact, and I would feel bereft without her. I trust her so implicitly that if she tells me I’m wrong I know it’s time to shut up and listen, because there is no malice in any advice she gives me. I think our minds are wired very similarly, which is perhaps why we enjoy each other’s company so much. Part of the joy of a road trip these days is that we can cover any distance in a car and it will seem like seconds because we have so much to talk about and so many opinions to share. Every now and then we differ, but I can always see her side.

In my work, the greatest joy is finding out that I’ve got a part I auditioned for. The joy that sits right next to that one is telling Fliss that it has happened. And when a project is complete I get even more joy from sitting beside Fliss at the premiere and watching her experience it.

Dad, Mum and David, Clay, Kim and Nat are always there when I need them as well. In my career Clay has always been a great adviser; I always look to his experience, knowledge and knowhow. My close friends are great shoulders to lean on, great ears to talk to and great minds to depend upon.

There’s also that someone in the wings that the people in the audience never see. If I were a fighter pilot, this person would be my wingman; as a rally driver they would be my navigator and co-driver. The person in the wings who guides me through so much of my career and everything I do is Deb Fryers. When the whole Kenny journey began, she was invaluable in planning PR and marketing for the film. Beyond that, she became an adviser to Clay and me and we worked very closely together. After that Deb became my personal manager and publicist. When you first get thrust in front of the media it can be quite daunting; Deb was the one who taught me how to deal with that. She let me know the duty that comes with having a recognisable head and the care that must be taken.

As Clayton said to audiences back in the test screening days for Kenny, if people truly think what you’re doing is perfect then it’s fine for them to say so, but I can’t do anything with a compliment. The only way any endeavour or project can be improved is with criticism, and therefore I welcome it. No one sets out to make a bad film, build a boat that doesn’t float, write a song that people don’t want to hum, or write a bad book. You need to open yourself up to criticism — but it takes a certain kind of character to be willing to both give and receive criticism — someone who wants what is best for the team. Deb has been a great adviser and teacher, but beyond all that she’s been an incredible friend who has been with me every single step of the way. In a great friendship, one thing that is required is total honesty, and Deb is someone who can tell me when I’m wrong. She can tell me when she thinks that I didn’t hit the mark in a project, or when she thinks I’m wrong in believing that something I’ve done is not good.

Fliss commented the other day that Deb is almost like part of our family, she is so much part of the day-to-day running of our lives. It is remarkable to have someone who is so much a part of the journey who is always hidden in the wings. But she prefers it that way; even now when she reads this book, Deb will tell me it’s unnecessary: ‘You didn’t have to say all that.’ Up until now I have always abided by her rule that there’s no need to mention her, but the time has come to say that Deb is always there. So many of the awards that I’ve won and the praise that I get deserve to go to her because she always makes sure I’m in the right place at the right time for the right reason.

If my career was to be considered a car then my mechanic is Deb Fryers. And she keeps the car running beautifully.

As wonderful as it is to have my acting dreams realised, there is no greater experience on earth than becoming a parent. There may be a time in the future when I sit down and write another book and then I may talk about my children more. By then they may have said, ‘We want to be a part of this world and we don’t mind you talking about us.’ Or they may have said that silence is the way to go. As their parents, Fliss and I will be happy with whatever decision they make.

But if I were to start talking about my children this book would be so thick it would make the Bible look like a leaflet because every day has another chapter writing itself right before my very eyes. I love to boast and rave about my children like every other parent does, so it has been hard not to keep mentioning them in the stories in this book. They are the mortar between the bricks in my world, and the roof and floors above and beneath us as well.

Although our children are not part of the story I have told here, there is no drama that could be more thrilling than our own family. There’s no comedy act that could make us laugh more than our children. There’s no love story that can be written that is greater than the love we have for our children. And there is no joy more intense than being a parent to our children. They are our greatest victory, our greatest creation, our greatest production, our greatest work.

Writing this book has made me walk down the lane of memories and the experience has been enchanting, to say the least. It’s a task bigger than I imagined, but more fulfilling than I had ever hoped, and I love thinking that some of my past is now preserved on paper and in the minds of readers. I highly recommend to anyone to just sit down and take your time telling a computer or a notebook your memories. When you are finished you can leave it with family members to pass on to future family members, so that you can continue to be witnessed and remembered past your leaving.

Although we only have Dad’s sister my dear Aunty Irene and Mum’s brother Les left out of the big-hearted Jacobson clan and the gentle-hearted Sheppard family, I feel like a little bit of all my uncles and aunts lives on in me, and I sincerely hope what I am as a whole is okay by them.

I truly want to thank you for reading my book. It is very flattering to have someone take an interest in your life, and I hope this book at the very least has put a smile on your dial. I have loved my life so far, and now it is time for me to go and live out the rest of my real-life story, continuing to make the odd mistake and hopefully continuing to learn from it, as well as making some good decisions based on what I have learned so far.

When I bump into some of you in the streets or at airports, where I spend a fair part of my life, maybe one of you will come up and say, ‘Hey, Shane, I read your book. That was a bit of fun.’ That would make me more than just a little bit happy.

Copyright

The ABC ‘Wave’ device is a trademark of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and is used under licence by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia.

First published in Australia in 2013

This edition published in 2013

by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited

ABN 36 009 913 517

www.harpercollins.com.au

Copyright © Ocean View Entertainment Pty Ltd 2013

The right of Shane Jacobson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Jacobson, Shane.

Shane Jacobson : the long road to overnight success / Shane Jacobson.

ISBN: 978 0 7333 3092 6 (pbk)

ISBN: 978 0 7304 9998 5 (ebook)

Jacobson, Shane.

Motion picture actors and actresses – Australia – Biography.

Motion picture producers and directors – Australia – Biography.

Actors – Australia – Biography

Authors – Australia – Biography.

920.710994

Cover design by Mina Rizkalla, HarperCollins Design Studio

Cover photography by Julian Kingma