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PREAMBLE
It was with great sadness that facts finally had to be faced: Tammy Tantschev was moving on, having accepted work overseas. There were meant to be another bunch of episodes featuring her as co-host – in the first instance, there would have been a bundle pre-recorded one Saturday before time ran out, with a couple of Monday evening sessions still set aside prior to that. But, alas, time got away from us.
So it was decided that instead of a single co-host, there would be several – a different one each week. And the first comedian available for the role of co-host was Dave Jory.
It was a difficult undertaking — that first go without the safety net of the regular, comfortable co-host.
But Dave was excellent!
Episode 34 went to air Friday 21st July.
OPENING THEME
Frank Zappa (?): The way I see it, Barry, this should be a very dynamite show.
This line is sampled from ‘Lumpy Gravy Pt 1’, from the Frank Zappa album Lumpy Gravy, and plays over the wow and flutter of bad radio reception sampled from ‘Reception’, from the Paul McCartney & wings album Back to the Egg. It is followed by the static and noise of a radio tuner being spun through various stations, and then gives way to ‘Holiday for Strings’ by Spike Jones and his City Slickers, until:
Deep ‘Announcer’ Voice: And now it’s time for Radio Ha Ha with Dom Romeo. [1]
Soundbite: Tammy Tantschev and Dom Romeo laugh uncontrollably
Dom Romeo: Hi, this is Dom Romeo, and just before we begin this episode of Radio Ha Ha I've got a couple of things I want to say. Firstly, I've got a cold. I’m very sorry, I’m gonna sound a bit blocked throughout most of this. My other special announcement is far more important, however. Today I’m joined on the show by special guest host, stand-up comic Dave Jory.
Dave, welcome.
Dave Jory: Dom, it's great to be here, this close to you and your cold.
Dom Romeo: Ah… look Dave, it’s always a pleasure to have you on the show, and I’m gonna do my best not to breath on you, but I’ve gotta say, this might instill a little bit of fear into you, but the first time I saw you, you instilled a bit of fear into me. I mean, quite frankly, as I’ve said before on the show, you come across, with your bold head and in a black suit, like a bit of a British gangster – like the sort that would appear in a Guy Ritchie film. And, as we're recording here in your living room, on your sofa, I must admit that I am eye-ing off the exits, just in case.
Dave Jory: Well actually, someone the other night told me I look like the character ‘Hitman’, from the video game. I don’t play video games, so I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not, but I think it’s the black suit. It’s a very sketchy character, I think.
Dom Romeo: It certainly works for you on stage, although I’ve gotta say, the first time I saw you in Raw, you were a bit scary. I don‘t think you‘d quite found your stage persona yet.
Dave Jory: Yeah, I was dressed the same, and doing much nastier material, to the point where you actually came up to me the following week when I showed up at the same club — which I was quite flattered by; I didn’t think you’d remember me because I wasn’t in the suit — and you sat me down and said, “there’s something there, material-wise, but you’ve got to pull it back a few notches, because I think” — quote/unquote — “the female judge thought you were going to cut somebody!” is what you said to me.
Dom Romeo: laughing
Dave Jory: And that’s stayed with me!
Dom Romeo: I do remember that comment, now that you bring it up, and I do remember that feeling — there was that distinct kind of tension that things may not stay all right on the night!
Soundbite: an example of some of Dave Jory’s more discomfort-inducing material — although not from that initial Raw Comedy heat, but one of the bits that still survives and solicits authentic, appreciative laughter. This bit came from a set recorded live at Sydney’s Original Comedy Store.
Dave Jory: Yeah, I think it was that thing of needing to guarantee some sort of reaction from the audience because I was so new to doing it, and I thought, I can’t handle any kind of silence, so I went for gasps of horror. That seemed like a better option to me than dead silence. I didn’t know how I was going to deal with that. Whereas disgust is something that you can work with, to some extent, but a laugh is always much better.
Dom Romeo: Well, I’ve gotta say that pretty soon you were getting the laughs — as we’ll hear when we play some of your comedy in this episode. We’ve also got some comedy from a relative newcomer, Mat Kenneally, a Melbourne comic. But we’re going to start off with a comedian that regular listeners will be familiar with: Sam Bowring, who we’ve played a few times. [2]
This is him in indignant, loud and shouty mode!
Soundbite: Sam Bowring delivers his routine about the awful curry pie he ate while driving back from a gig in Canberra; as Sam actually names the company that manufactured the pie, the name has been ‘censored’ by covering it with the brass band sound effect lifted from a game show sketch by Eric Idle, from the Monty Python album Monty Python’s Previous Record.
Staion ID: Radio Ha Ha: it’s so funny, it should be against the law. Radio Ha Ha.
Dom Romeo: And that was Sam Bowring recorded live at the venue he co-runs with Kent Valentine, the Mic In Hand, having a bit of a rant about a meat pie that wasn’t up to scratch. And you’ll notice that every time he said the proprietor of the pie, a certain Mr…
Sound Effect: brass band sound effect lifted from a game show sketch by Eric Idle, from the Monty Python album Monty Python’s Previous Record.
Dom Romeo: …We actually had to censor…
Sound Effect: brass band sound effect lifted from a game show sketch by Eric Idle, from the Monty Python album Monty Python’s Previous Record.
Dom Romeo: …with the…
Sound Effect: brass band sound effect lifted from a game show sketch by Eric Idle, from the Monty Python album Monty Python’s Previous Record.
Dom Romeo: …sound effect.
Now, clearly, Dave, we were listening to Sam being very angry. It’s a persona he uses for some of his material, but not for all of his material. How did you come upon your persona? As we said, you started out quite scary, but now you’ve kind of found your niche. What is that niche, and how did you find it?
Dave Jory: Well I don’t know; I think that getting the tone right is pretty important, and I think Sammy does it really well with that stuff you just heard; he’s very good at staying in that character and being indignant about stuff that’s not really very important, which I think is good. If you’re gonna get that nasty, it may as well be about something petty, otherwise you’re gonna start talking about big stuff, and you’re gonna sound like a bit of a jerk.
So, I don’t know; I think it was having no experience doing any sort of stuff on stage, so I just came up with a blank persona and wrote stuff that was going to work regardless of how well I delivered it. And gradually you get better at delivering it, so you can try different stuff. I guess it softens gradually. But yeah, as we said, it started pretty brittle and not very likeable… so… I smile a bit more now! Which is a good thing!
Dom Romeo: It is a very good thing! And one bit that I do like to hear you do is a bit of material about those kids you see in superhero costumes in public. This is a routine that was also recorded live at the Mic In Hand in Glebe.
Soundbite: Dave Jory delivers his routine about the kids you see in public dressed as superheroes.
Station ID: Radio Ha Ha: Just for laughs!
Dom Romeo: Now I‘ve gotta say, we’ve all seen the kids in the superhero costumes, Dave, but I notice them a lot more now, having heard your material about it. How did you come to write that bit. I mean, was there a prevalence of kiddies in Superman and Batman costumes around you?
Dave Jory: No, I think I saw one, and, same thing, now that I’ve been doing that bit of material, I do – I see those kids around all the time. When I ask that first question — has anybody seen those kids — more and more people kept saying that they’d seen them and it seemed like a pretty easy way to start. I don’t know, there’s nothing terribly offensive about it, so it‘s a good thing to rant about for a little while, and people seem to know it, so that was enough of a reason to do it, I think. If people answer the question, if you ask if you’ve seen them, if they say ‘yes’, it’s a good sign, I think, isn’t it?
Dom Romeo: Indeed! And I also find it interesting that ‘Rain Man’ and ‘Elephant Man’ both get good responses. Surprisingly, I would have thought, that they’re such archetypes in your audiences’ psyche…
Dave Jory: Yeah, well I don’t know — they’re pretty old references. ‘Rain Man’ is mid-80s, and ‘Elephant Man’ — there’s no reason, really, for anyone to know much about those characters, but if you just say the words, I guess, people just remember what it means. You say ‘Rain Man’ and you get some picture in your head, don’t you. So it doesn’t really matter if you haven’t seen the movie, or you haven’t seen it for twenty years. There’s some kind of resonance there, I guess, so I just get away with it, I think.
Dom Romeo: And as for the Elephant Man, even people who never saw the Mel Brookes-produced film, there was of course a great Great Mysteries of the World episode where Mr Spock took us through the ins and outs of John Merrick.
Dave Jory: Yeah, that‘s right! It was Mel Brookes that produced that as well; I forgot about that.
Dom Romeo: (doing cheesey Elephant Man impression): “My mother was so beautiful!”
Staion ID: You won’t die laughing, but you might mess your pants. Radio Ha Ha!
Dom Romeo: So we’ve talked a little bit about different comedic personas on the stage, Dave. One person who’s different again is Mat Kenneally, an up-and-coming Melbourne comic who, again, was recorded live at the Mic in Hand.
Soundbite: Mat Kenneally, performing a routine about terrorism and public transport, recorded live at the Mic in Hand
Station ID: It‘s hilarious! Gut-busting! Jocular! Humorous! Rollicking! And side-splitting! Oh, hang on! It’s Radio Ha Ha!
Dom Romeo: Mat Kenneally there, talking about terrorism and public transport. And Dave, I don’t know if you saw Mat, but he was in The Comedy Zone earlier this year.
Dave Jory: I didn’t see him in The Comedy Zone, but I worked with him a couple of times and hung out with him a little bit, and I think he’s a lovely guy, and I think he’s doing some lovely stuff as well.
Dom Romeo: And I should explain for listeners that The Comedy Zone is a show that the Melbourne International Comedy Festival puts on as part of the Festival, where they actually select a handful of up-and-comers and produce the show for them. And I’ve got to say, Mat was brilliant, but he’s come a long way even since then!
Staion ID: Jokes, gags, funnies, one-liners, laughs, that describes me. Now what about you? Radio Ha Ha!
Dom Romeo: Dave, we’re getting to the end of the episode!
Dave Jory: It’s a tragedy, isn’t it. Is there any way we can extend the good times? Maybe get a hotel room together? I don’t know — what do we do from here?
Dom Romeo:You know, that line would have done so much more for me, had it come out of Tammy’s mouth!
Dave Jory: I know, this is the problem with co-hosts, isn’t it. You get a guest guy in and suddenly, when you stop looking for something, you find it right in front of you.
Dom Romeo:You know what, we’re gonna stop right there — kind of — ’cause I’m gonna play more of your material. This a material about going to the porn shop!
Dave Jory: Well, it’s kind of material about not going to the porn shop in a lot of ways, but we’ll play it and we’ll see.
Soundbite: Dave Jory delivers a routine about how adult bookshops bother him.
Station ID: Radio Ha Ha — not for the faint-hearted, but definitely for the fun-at-heart.
Dom Romeo: Nice punchline, Dave!
Dave Jory: Yeah, thanks, that one always seems to work. I’ve never had a problem with that piece of material which is good. It’s one of those rare bits that always seems to work so I‘m very fond of it.
Dom Romeo: What I love is that you ask a question there, and there’s a gap where the audience could actually supply an answer, but they never do.
Dave Jory: Yeah, somehow they never seem to yell anything out and I can leave that big pause there before saying the last couple of words and in my head I’m thinking, someone’s gonna yell something out one day like a suggestion or something, but nobody ever has. They always seem to go with it — which is kinda rare, I guess.
Dom Romeo: And, Radio Ha Ha listeners, that is not your cue to go and see Dave Jory and shout out something stupid during the pause. I will not approve of that.
Dave Jory: Yeah, I wouldn’t approve of that either.
Dom Romeo: And besides, he might cut you!
Dave Jory: Well, old me would have. I’ve softened!
Soundbite: Last segment of ‘Holiday for Strings’ by Spike Jones and His City Slickers.
Soundbite: If you’d like more free information and entertainment podcasts, log onto www.freedigitalcontent.com. That’s www.freedigitalcontent.com.
Dom Romeo: Um… we got to the end of the show and we didn’t really say goodbye properly — I feel a little awkward.
Dave Jory: I hate long goodbyes, Dom. I don’t see that there’s any reason we should end this. We’re on a good thing; maybe we could meet up later for coffee? What… what are you doing?
Dom Romeo: See, again, if that had been Tammy talking…
FOOTNOTES
- Editing the ‘Tammy Tantschev and’ out of ‘Radio Ha Ha with Tammy Tantschev and Dom Romeo’ brought a tear to the eye — sniff!
- In Episode 15 and Episode 30
Finally, I find out what happened to Tammy. You might mention that in the show. Of course I'm just listening to the show from September 1st now, so you may have. Anyway, I very much enjoy the show and have discovered a lot of new comedians that are outstanding.
Posted by: UltraBob | September 14, 2006 at 07:59 PM
Hi UltraBob. Initially, we had planned a proper farewell episode, but things got a bit too busy too soon, and so I just had to make do on the fly. I may get around to mentioning her departure on an episode when I can find a way to work it in.
Posted by: Dom | September 19, 2006 at 10:47 AM