David McPhail at his retirement home in Christchurch. Photo / George Heard
Kiwi comedy pioneer David McPhail, one half of the legendary duo McPhail and Gadsby, is frustrated to be living in a Christchurch retirement village. But he hasn't lost his sparkling sense of humour, or enjoyment in poking fun at politicians, writes Kurt Bayer.
David McPhail is still a funny bugger.
Even with the oxygen machine whirring and wheezing, in a place he wakes every morning and thinks he's living inside a nightmare, he can create laughter.
A natural comedy alchemist, the man who knew, who just bloody well knew, that conservative 1970s New Zealand was ready for satirical comedy on television.
When the tall, blonde woman delivers his fish and chip lunch, complete with cling-filmed glass of chardonnay, he can't resist a quip.
"Catch the fish yourself?"
"Of course," she smiles. "That's what I was doing this morning: stomping on the grapes and catching the fish."
The interplay makes his eyes twinkle.
When the Weekend Herald phoned him at his Christchurch retirement home, and inquired whether he'd be willing to chat about his remarkable life and career, the 75-year-old actor, writer and satirist responded quick as a whip: "Sounds like an obituary!"
His legs have failed him. Living at home with Anne, his wife of 54 years, the father of two was continually falling over. It was dangerous.
So for now, the infamously dry wit is marooned in his room, hooked up to the oxygen machine.
Visits perk him up.
His wife pops by. Their granddaughter will visit after school. There are crackers in the drawer. Anne's off to play bridge.
"All right darling, you have a lovely afternoon," he tells her, leaning in for a kiss.
On Friday afternoons, his old school mates drop by for a beer. Ken Ellis and Chris McVeigh are among them – mates from school and uni days, and who starred alongside McPhail in the pioneering show, A Week of It.
Ellis calls their lifelong friendship one of the treasures of his life.
"We're still mates after 60 years . . . God knows one of us will be kicked off soon enough," McPhail says, propping himself up in an oversized armchair.
McPhail was born in April 1945, around the time Adolf Hitler "blew out what remained of his brains".
His father, Alexander Edward McPhail, a "devout atheist" with Scottish roots, was chairman of the New Zealand Rugby Union, and successful businessman. He owned a tannery, imported goods, and was a landlord.
McPhail, a podgy sweet-toothed child with a stammer, enjoyed a privileged upbringing in a large brick house on Manchester St in Christchurch.
He attended Cathedral Grammar School, where he was an enthusiastic choirboy, which helped his stammer, rehearsing almost every day in Christ Church Cathedral "in an almost vertical room under the cathedral's spire".
McPhail then went on to Christchurch Boys' High School, where Ellis was among a tight-knit bunch of mates, who would stay close for decades, discussing the poetry of Dylan Thomas and T S Eliot.
A schoolmaster, "Chops" Sinclair ,introduced McPhail to the "marvels of Shakespeare", while another to his future wife, Anne McLeod, at choir practice.
A brief stint at the University of Canterbury studying English was overshadowed by a rising interest in the theatre.
After "embarrassing results" during his first year, he landed a cadet reporter job at The Press newspaper.
He started at the bottom of a newsroom "large, noisy and filled with smoke" and was assigned to the court round, where he hoped to cover sensation murder trials but ended up with minor stories on shoplifters, burglars and "the curious case of a man who tried to assault his wife with an empty hot water bottle", according to his 2010 autobiography, The Years Before My Death – Memories of a Comic Life.
After several jobs on the paper, and an unhappy posting to Ashburton, McPhail resigned to become a radio reporter and then a TV journalist on a show called Town and Around There, he enjoyed the more quirky, offbeat stories, while later making skits for a TV show called As I See It.
Meanwhile, he watched from afar as the British satire boom of the 60s take off, with groundbreaking shows like the BBC's That Was The Week That Was adamant that funny local TV was possible despite many executives being wary, even terrified by it.
"At the time, TVNZ was made up of the biggest collection of comedy experts in the Southern Hemisphere . . . bulls***!" he says, collapsing into a coughing fit. "They didn't have the faintest idea what they were doing.
"The heads of television were more inclined to follow the wonderful trends of such comedy as On the Buses - that's what they thought we should be making.
"All I did was that I just kept pushing."
Finally, in 1977 his persistence paid off, and was granted a pilot show, A Week of It, on a tiny budget.
Without any money for travel or pay actors, he turned to his close circle of Christchurch friends: Chris McVeigh, A K Grant, Ken Ellis, Bruce Ansley, and Peter Hawes.
And then there was Jon Gadsby, whom he had met at a Dunedin student party a few months previously, after friends had insisted he meet a man who was "bloody funny".
"That evening would define the next 20 years of my life," he would later reflect.
A Week of It was the first comedy show to contain impersonations of real Kiwis and the first to "blatantly describe politicians", McPhail says. They were well aware of the libel laws.
In the opening programme, they asked: "What is Bill Rowling (the leader of the Labour Party at the time) like in bed?"
Later, they announced they had discovered Prime Minister Robert Muldoon's family tree and showed a picture of a silver birch.
"This proves Robert Muldoon is the son of a birch."
The first A Week of It also featured what would become the famous Three Jokers sketch of George, Gary and Wayne standing around a pub leaner in the Glue Pot Tavern.
A repeated cry of "Jeez, Wayne!" became a runaway catchphrase and ingrained part of the Kiwi vernacular.
The brazen sketches were often written close to the show's transmission, making them current and edgy. But it also made for some nervous times.
"I can pick those that were written very close to transmission because they just have a different feeling about them," McPhail says. "You can feel the tension and see the wild horror in the eyes."
After first airing during the "cemetery hour" time of 10.25pm, it attracted an audience and the show took off. It won best light entertainment programme at the 1978 Feltex television awards.
Nobody had ever taken such direct pops at political characters in New Zealand.
McPhail says it took the public by surprise, especially when they took on Muldoon, who was a feared character across the country. It's still what McPhail's most remembered for.
"He was this garrulous, argumentative, and also dangerous, prime minister ,who was not afraid of being insulting to anyone," he says.
"A lot of the country was afraid of Muldoon and when you've got a guy like that, you've got a very potent target [for satire]."
While the public lapped up the lampooning of Muldoon, it became clear to McPhail that the man himself was not amused.
The most ire came after a This Is Your Life sketch, where the host, played by Gadsby, asked McPhail playing the prime minister, "Do you recognise this voice?"
A female voiceover said, "Congratulations Rob, dear."
After some thought ,Muldoon replied, "Is it Barry Crump?"
He then didn't recognise her when she walked on stage. Told it's his wife, Thea, the Muldoon character barks: "Sit down over there and be quiet."
The next day, Muldoon's irate press secretary was on the phone, telling McPhail: "Don't ever mention his wife again".
McPhail listened and hung up, thinking, "F*** off."
"Once we reached that stage, then you could do anything," McPhail smiles, looking back.
On another occasion, he was doing a live show in Auckland with Gadsby when Muldoon turned up in the audience.
It created backstage panic and McPhail wondered whether he should change his material, which included Muldoon and was "much rougher than what you saw on television".
He considered backing out but was encouraged to go "full noise".
Walking on stage, under the glare of spotlights, he couldn't see any faces in the audience.
"But he was right at the back, surrounded by his parliamentary assistant boys, and the spotlight cut right across his head, so I could see this dome and when I knew where he was, I thought, 'Let's go'. And off we went."
"I didn't change the material because I'd get lost, and it was pretty on-the-nose stuff - justifiably satirical to anyone - but really rude."
After the show, the dressing room flew open and in stormed Muldoon.
He paused for a photograph with McPhail and the following day, it appeared in the newspaper.
"Of course, what he'd done was diffuse everything. 'They're mates', is what people would think."
He bumped into him at another function, where Muldoon quipped, "You'll never be as good as the original," before walking off.
Although the sketches often cut close to the bone, the Kiwi public lapped it up.
McPhail says it proved that New Zealand had become a "mature" nation, able to finally laugh at itself.
"If we can't do that, then we're in big trouble," he says.
After three seasons of A Week of It, there were seven series of skit show McPhail and Gadsby, which dominated Kiwi TV in the 80s.
McPhail also went on to star in backwoods comedy Letter to Blanchy and one-man play Muldoon, which toured the country.
Although Muldoon was ripe for mickey-taking, McPhail says it would've been tough for him to satirise current prime minister Jacinda Ardern.
"Up until now, she hasn't made any mistakes and you don't do a whole sketch show about Mother Teresa, it just doesn't work," he says.
"So you have to wait until, rather unfortunately, the Prime Minister starts tripping up as she is starting to do now and doing things that are silly, or funny in itself."
McPhail revelled in the creative process, especially the writing sessions with himself, Gadsby and close mate A K Grant.
It was often done around a hotel room table after Grant came "clinking in" after clearing the mini-bar fridge.
"They were interesting times," McPhail says, chuckling.
"If you spent too much time trying to get a sketch right, it was wasted time. Invariably, some of the funniest stuff came in times of desperation."
It wasn't often that things fell flat – or missed the mark.
McPhail looks back fondly on those times. And those lifelong friendships – although he buried his comedy partner Gadsby in 2015 and Grant in 2000.
But he still looks forward to catching up with his other mates on a Friday afternoon.
And he hopes that over the next few months he can move back home.
"The problem is, you can see it, I'm rational," he says, peering over his glasses.
"My mind is not in any way odd. The problem I have, and it's a straightforward one, is walking . . . otherwise I'm fine."
He's reminded of one old skit. A close shot shows two men carrying a coffin on their shoulders, walking towards the camera.
When it cuts to a side-shot, it shows just the two men on one side – no pallbearers on the other side.
"Now, it doesn't sound funny, I know," he says, those eyes twinkling again.
"But it makes you stop and go, 'What the … ?'"
He laughs, infectiously, and the oxygen machine whirrs.
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