Hello, I'm Julia Zemiro.
I'm here at historic Mount Panorama racetrack in Bathurst
to meet a comedian and a writer
and a storyteller and, look, that's just the beginning.
He's the pretty one from the Doug Anthony All Stars. It's Tim Ferguson.
(DRIVING ROCK MUSIC)
(LAUGHS) May I?
You may. Come on in.
(LAUGHS)
You look like Julia Zemiro.
Thank you for picking me up, Tim Ferguson.
My pleasure. Can I see your beautiful eyes?
'Cause you were the pretty one in the Doug Anthony All Stars.
Look at that. He's still got it. See if I can do it again.
(LAUGHS) He's still got it. Oh, that's beautiful.
SONG: ♪ Jump in my car... ♪ (LAUGHS)
♪ I wanna take you home
♪ Jump in my car... ♪ Yay!
♪ It's too far to walk on your own. ♪
(TRILLS) Yee-ha!
Tim Ferguson was one-third of the legendary Doug Anthony All Stars,
who burst out of the national capital in the '80s
and spent a decade shocking and delighting
audiences across the world.
My life is a book full of adventure, sex,
loose cars, fast women,
with an incredibly charismatic central character, me.
Their anarchic mix of comedy and music
brought them fame at home, in the UK and the US.
Diagnosed with MS in his 20s,
he's gone on to become one of our most accomplished comedians
and screenwriters, and has established himself
as Australia's leading teacher of comedy.
2014 saw the reunion of the All Stars
and last year a triumphant return to the Edinburgh comedy festival.
(DRIVING ROCK MUSIC)
So we're on our way to your old home in country Newbridge.
Hey, we're in Perthville. What's Perthville, Tim?
Any memories of Perthville?
Yeah, they used to sell the best pies in the world.
Then we're into Georges Plains. It's gorgeous.
(COWS MOO) Now we need to give your full name.
Timothy Dorcen Langbene Ferguson.
Who was Dorcen? Who was Langbene? They were my grandfathers.
Langbene was a family name and it means 'long legs' in German.
Does it really? It doesn't. Yeah. Langbene.
Really? Yeah. Yeah.
(IRISH ACCENT) And you do got them. And I do got long legs.
Useless but long. Oh, that's great.
We're going back into your past, Tim.
What do you expect you'll find today?
I don't know. It might be a bit emotional.
I do tend to get a bit emotional. Do you?
Well, yeah, I'm an Australian male. We're highly emotional creatures.
But do they often get a chance
to show that, Australian men, do you think?
No, we bottle it up, where it keeps us interesting.
You know, once your emotion's out, well, it's out.
You gotta wait until another one comes along.
(ROUSING WHISTLE MUSIC)
Look at the fancy mailbox.
Oh, it's so pretty, Tim.
And is that the house down there? Yeah, yeah.
For how many years were you here?
I think maybe three we were at this place.
But, yeah, we had so much fun.
Has it changed much? Does it look different? Or does it look the same?
No, the house looks exactly the same.
The same tiling. The same ornamental Doric pillar.
And were you an outdoors kid with your brothers?
It's the best way to grow up, is in the bush.
You just get told, "Go outside, watch out for snakes."
And you did? (LAUGHS) And that was it.
Oh, and, "Don't torment the sheep."
My, my. My, my.
It's the same carpet.
And you can see if it's still here, it's still alive.
It's still got all its texture and it's got its colour.
This was, you know... Fancy carpet.
..when they were making carpet.
So this looks like the bedrooms off this hall?
Yeah, this was our bedroom.
"Our"? So did you share a room?
Oh, yeah, this was... Oh, my God.
We had the three boys... (GASPS)
..crammed in bunk beds.
No! Yeah, yeah.
Three boys in here? Did you get on?
Yeah, we got on pretty well most of the time. Yeah.
But we had fights just to, you know, get the moths out.
Otherwise just bunk beds. No heating.
And so when it was bedtime,
you had to get into a bed that would have been
in -4, -5 degree temperatures.
This was where all the business of,
you know, being a family would happen.
Yeah, the dinner table.
What would a family meal be like? Are you a chatty family?
Are you argumentative?
It was three sons, so it was more like 'The Simpsons'.
(GOBBLES) You know, "Can't talk, can't think, eating."
So there's Stephen, who's the eldest,
you're in the middle and Simon the youngest.
Cynthia, Mum, Tony, Dad.
What did the Ferguson family do for entertainment?
Ah, we watched television.
Really? Yeah. It was just TV.
You know, TV was the connection to the outside world.
(BIRDSONG)
Let's have a look in the other part of the house.
Yeah, the bathroom has what could only be called
a very special feature.
There it is.
Made by one of the original owners
to make you feel that you're under water.
"Are there sharks?" You know, "Yeah, there's a shark."
This wasn't your first home. Singapore was.
What's your earliest memory? Do you remember Singapore at all?
Oh, very much so.
We were camped in Singapore
with all these toffy British diplomats' kids,
and so we were there hanging around with people
who left me with this accent.
By the time we came back from Singapore, I sounded like this,
and it meant I didn't have to go to university
because I sound like I've been to university.
Brilliant.
I mean, I could pretty well say I was a doctor
and start writing prescriptions,
and nobody would ever say, "Wait a second, cowboy."
Um, what was your dad doing? Why were you in Singapore?
He was a war correspondent.
So he was running around, you know, interviewing Americans.
This is Dau Tieng, some 40 miles from Saigon
and about 20 miles from the Cambodian border.
It's the forward headquarters of the American 25th Division
and over the next few weeks could be a name to remember.
He was the reporter who got news out to the West
that, you know, "Saigon is... you know, it's falling."
"It's being attacked," which was a huge attack by the north on Saigon.
Do you think your dad was anti-war? Oh, totally.
Part of the reason he went was to do what he did,
which is to photograph it and get footage of it
and get interviews of it.
Um, he'd had a hard time with the ABC.
He saw, when he was in Phnom Penh, Wilfred Burchett.
This was an Australian journalist who'd crossed over,
who was hanging around with the Khmer Rouge
seeing the world through their eyes, interviewing their leaders.
So he became persona non grata.
His passport was revoked by the Australian Government.
Dad saw him in the street, grabbed his cameraman and said,
"We have to interview this guy,"
and they did an interview with Wilfred Burchett.
They put it in the can, popped it into the diplomatic bag,
it came back to Australia and the ABC burnt it, they burnt the film.
The reason was, well, because it had Wilfred Burchett in it
and the ABC, you know, is impartial up to the point
where they will destroy information to protect the government.
I don't believe that's changed in any way.
Did that piss your dad off? Oh, he was enraged.
Mum says he was just...
Like, Dad very rarely lost his temper
but he was totally, you know, gutted.
Your dad's a truth-seeker and a troublemaker in that way.
Do you get your troublemaking from him, do you think?
I think so.
Um, not that he ever said, you know,
"Tim, sit down. If ever you're given a chance, cause trouble."
Yeah.
But, uh, certainly there is that instinct.
Certainly a disregard for institutions.
Which is why I say things like what I said about the ABC.
So once the Doug Anthony All Stars were given rein
to go on TV every week,
and Ted Robinson, the producer, never said, "Don't do that,"
um, in the back of my mind I was only thinking,
"Wilfred Burchett, yeah."
"Hi, good evening. We're the Doug Anthony All Stars.
"Tonight we're gonna blow something up.
"We're gonna sing about hippies. We're gonna smash a VW to pieces.
"And we're gonna say a rude word." Or four.
And in the back of my mind it was,
"Wilfred Burchett, Wilfred Burchett, Wilfred would have loved this."
Just one question - if you're young, rich and beautiful,
what on earth are you doing watching television?
Turn off your televisions. Go outside and do the filth.
Get your peenies and your vages
and whack them together, whack them together.
(LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE) Yes indeed. Turn off your TVs.
Turn off your TV and get outside. Turn it off.
You too, mate. You too. Go outside and play games.
(ALL SPEAK AT ONCE)
You turn off as well. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on, you too.
Don't play games. Don't play games. One, two, three.
ALL: Turn them off. (DRUM ROLL)
So how's it been being back in this house?
Well, this is... it's just time warp.
And I was thinking, you know, what would I say to that little guy
considering that, you know, I'll be here in the future
with Julia Zemiro?
You knew.
And some people often say
they would tell themselves, you know, something.
They'd give themselves some piece of advice.
And even though I've made terrible, stupid mistakes in my life,
I would actually say, you know,
"Carry on, do whatever you're going to do."
You think it's inevitable?
Yeah, I've never wanted to reset. Mmm.
I figure, you know, you screw up, you move on.
(ENGINE REVS)
You went to nine different schools. Should we go to one of them now?
Wow, yeah. Yeah. We'll go to All Saints.
(UPBEAT ROCK MUSIC)
The Kingswood was, for a time, THE Australian car.
It was how Australians could look at themselves and say,
"We've made that."
This car too was in the back seat
that you first saw your mum have an epileptic fit?
Yeah, yeah. It started to happen.
It was really very unsettling to see the wheels suddenly come off.
Especially your parent.
Yeah, like, "Wha, what are we doing here?"
Epilepsy is a very tricky thing to have
mainly because you don't know when it will go off.
It just happens, as far as they know.
Do you think you get your sense of humour from Cynthia, from your mum?
Oh, yeah, I think so.
The great thing about Mum is she will laugh all the time,
and in fact it's the best way for her to recover from anything.
Just make her laugh and she's back.
(SCHOOLCHILDREN GIGGLE AND CHATTER INDISTINCTLY)
What number was this one?
Uh, this was number six.
And how old were you when you were here?
So it's the first three years of high school.
I got a scholarship just because, as I found out,
everyone else in the class was really stupid.
I hope they're watching. (LAUGHS) But hang on, this school...
Was this school co-ed when you were here or had it just changed?
We were there. It was the first year of co-education.
Oh, I love first year.
So a lot of people who would come to a school like this didn't come
because boys and girls mixing together has never worked
in any sphere of life ever.
In history. Look what it did to Parliament.
Oh, this is a great art room.
Yeah, this is where it all happens.
Were you good at art? No.
I was impatient.
Ah, yes. Science.
Were you good at science? I was very good at science.
'Cause it just makes sense.
That's the great thing I like about science.
It's all connected to other science.
You know, science is science, unless you're a right-wing dingbat.
Were there any teachers that stood out for you?
One was John Maiser, who I had in Year 8,
who was a Canadian guy who used to busk with Neil Young.
You know, he was... Wow.
He gave us in the first class an assignment which is,
"Go away, you have to write a story which is 'How I Killed Mr Maiser'."
And then the next class we had he brought all our books in,
slammed it on the desk and said, "This is shit."
We were like... (GASPS) (GASPS) So...
He said, "This is not how you kill me.
"Some of you only killed me in a paragraph.
"I want you to take this, and your homework tonight
"is to kill me and kill me good."
It was just like, "OK." And then I wrote an eight-page epic.
And then he was going, "OK, now everybody's awake."
Do you know that you actually did have a poem
published in the school magazine?
Uh, I can't remember it. Can I read it to you?
Oh, yeah. It's called 'Tomorrow'.
'Tomorrow'. 'Tomorrow'.
"They escape in movies, but not me.
"I never escape.
"Death tomorrow."
(LAUGHS) Isn't that beautiful?
Kapow! Today I'd put in a joke.
Would you?
Just so it becomes actual drama as opposed to torpor.
Yep. And so nine schools. Did you ever feel settled?
No. No.
But, uh, even if people stay at the same school, they're never settled.
You know what it's like. That's true. That's true.
You can be in the same place for the whole time and never quite fit in
and never feel like you hit your stride, that's true.
But, you know, as being a teenager goes,
I felt I fitted in here just 'cause, you know, I knew everybody
and they knew me and, yeah, I didn't like leaving.
But it was only momentary because I developed this facility,
which was the ability to move on,
which would just happen in the back of my mind.
The bleach spray would come out.
(SQUIRTS, SQUEAKS)
(LAUGHS)
And then we would begin again. Start again.
We are off now to the second chapter of your childhood.
Canberra. It's only a three and a half hour drive. Are you ready?
I was born shortly before I was ready.
Cruising in a Kingswood.
How would you describe yourself professionally?
The simplest thing is to say comedian.
The way I've always looked upon comedy
is that it's the most effective way to change how people think.
'Cause if people are laughing and they're laughing at something
they know they shouldn't be laughing at,
they're revealing something to themselves.
You know that thing where people go, "Oh, my God.
"I can't believe you said that and I can't believe I'm laughing."
Something is going on. It's subconscious and they're changing.
Comedy is always underestimated, which is just how we like it.
Is it? Yeah, yeah.
You wanna keep it on the down low?
Oh, as soon as people start saying, "And please, ladies and gentlemen,
"be upstanding for the comedians," we're all in trouble.
Yay! Yay!
(CHEERFUL MUSIC)
(SPEAKS INAUDIBLY)
This was number se... eight.
Eight? Second-last school.
Uh, it's called the school without walls.
So they've modified the building so it looks like a church.
Before it just looked like a hippie school.
A hippie school. Yeah.
Oh, Tim. You've just said the magic word, 'hippie school'.
Hey, hey. Whoo-hoo.
Whoo!
Wow, it doesn't look like a school at all.
It looks very churchy.
Don't you think? It LOOKS churchy.
It's a church. They've turned it into a...
You know, they've turned it into a church.
Were there school desks? Were there separate rooms?
Different buildings? There were.
There was an art studio. (GASPS)
There was a little office where the, you know, the hippies
tried to keep things vaguely organised.
Oh, my God, if someone had said they're gonna turn it
into a Catholic church back then,
there would have been some sort of half-arsed revolution.
When you say "without walls", I mean, how free was it?
I mean, uniforms? Oh, no uniforms.
Uh, barely clothes when it got hot.
You didn't have to go to class
and you could smoke cigarettes in class if you felt like that.
You could eat. You could drink coffee.
You could do whatever you liked in class.
It was really about a university experience.
Right.
Well, we were told, "If you want something out of this
"then you're gonna have to go and do it yourselves, we don't monitor you.
"If you want to study something like film studies,
"then tell us and we'll assign a teacher just to you.
"But if you want that stuff to happen,
"you better do it 'cause, you know, we're all hippies."
So small classes then? Oh, tiny.
Like, a class of six was regarded as, you know, getting a bit too big.
It was a school that was run effectively
by the students themselves.
What were you like when you were at this school?
How different were you to the boy in Bathurst?
Well, yeah, I opened like a lotus. Did you?
Yeah. All of a sudden it was like, "OK.
"Now... now I can do whatever the hell I want."
Do you think it was here that you learnt
what you were gonna do when you left school?
I didn't know until we started busking and crowds were coming.
Then it starts to kick in?
Yeah, then I thought, "This comedy stuff."
It never occurred to me that it's quite hard,
um, because it was just... it was happening from a young age.
As soon as we started busking, then the whole thing was set.
Did you enjoy being famous at the time of Doug Anthony All Stars?
I loved it.
It was like... it's like we're rock stars without all the stuff.
Without roadies. Roadies.
Everybody had a simple job. It was very rock'n'roll.
It was a rock'n'roll comedy lifestyle,
which is what Eddie Izzard said.
"You guys have created rock'n'roll comedy,
"and you live like rock'n'roll stars."
And, you know, talk about clique, we were our own clique.
When did MS actually start to become debilitating?
All along the line, I'd had weird little things -
eyes gone a bit crossed
and, you know, the pins and needles
and feeling like your head's on fire, like literally on fire.
And I kept it to myself 'cause I figured why rock the boat?
And also, "Everybody else is complaining about stuff.
"Why would I get in the way of that?"
But, uh, then my left side went slack a couple of times
and, uh, the doctors were all shrugging.
It was a worry to everybody else. I didn't care.
I figured it doesn't matter. I'll just keep going.
You decide you'll leave Doug Anthony's partly because of that.
But then you still worked at Channel 9
and did very physical work with 'Don't Forget Your Toothbrush'.
The idea of doing 'Don't Forget Your Toothbrush'
was way too exciting to worry about the fact that it could all explode,
'cause my rationale was anybody's wheels can come off at any time.
And we've seen celebrities whose wheels just come off.
But when does it sort of go, "OK, now it's actually stopping me
"from what I want to do"?
Well, because it relapses and then it remits, it comes and it goes,
it was easy enough to say,
"Well, this is just happening and now it's not happening."
So I figured just power on, and also I was furious
that the Doug Anthony All Stars had stopped.
I was just... I spent most of my time quietly in fury
and nobody around me knew that I was seething with rage at myself.
You can say "I'm leaving the group" and change your mind and go back.
No, no, you can't. Why?
It took me a long time to get around to that.
'Cause, you know, I broke the guys' hearts.
Wouldn't you be putting their hearts back together if you went back?
I would have had to smash a lot of eggs to do that, though.
How long were you angry for, do you think, after that?
Oh, I was angry until Paul and I caught up
and started talking about doing it again.
Last year, Doug Anthony All Stars did Edinburgh.
Um, you were one of only two five-star reviews
along with Louis C.K.
You're in the wheelchair, Paul McDermott's back.
Richard Fidler's not doing it
but Paul Livingston, the Flacco, is your third.
What's that like being up there again doing it?
Oh, it's great fun.
The... the stuff we're doing now, the stuff we're talking about
is truly scary stuff that people of our generation
are starting to deal with now.
Uh, people are dying and the wheels are falling off
the people that they used to rely upon.
Parents, you know, going crazy and that sort of thing.
It's a highly emotional show.
In the UK, they, uh... they found it very emotional.
Still with Paul singing like, you know, a drunken meadowlark
and, um, Flacco being weird Flacco,
there's still the anger and the driving
and there's the terror in the room but it's, uh... it's now informed
by three guys who've had a hundred years of doing comedy.
And live comedy. Yeah, so it's funnier.
You and Paul, it's like a married couple.
You're both so comfortable
'cause you know whatever you say, you'll bounce back.
That's very rare.
And it just comes from hanging around each other.
Also I know what he finds funny. Yeah.
And now I'm allowed to laugh at it onstage...
(SOFTLY) Unreal.
..which is, you know, it's because of my condition
that I'm allowed to actually sit there and giggle.
Everybody's just happy to see me being happy.
Mmm. Do you love him? Do you love Paul?
Oh, yeah, yeah. He's... he's my dearest, you know, oldest friend.
Shall we go back to where it all began?
Not a stone's throw from here in the Canberra mall?
Yes. Let's do that.
Oh, yeah.
And I'm sorry I smoked a joint right here.
(FUNKY MUSIC)
Oh, Canberra mall.
So you used to perform up here.
Oh, where's your plaque?
I don't know. There will be one around here somewhere.
Here it is. Here it is. One of these... There it is.
There it is. What does it say?
"The Doug Anthony All Stars were born and died here."
Which one are you? Oh, yeah.
I'm the good-looking one in the middle.
In the middle. You'd perform here with crowds 200, 300 people.
It was a situation where people would turn up,
ready for the Saturday morning shenanigans.
Wow!
A show would go for a couple of hours of just ridiculousness
with constant stops for money, you know.
"We're not doing this for nothing." Gimme.
And it was, uh... Yeah, we got big crowds.
Became quite a ritual for Canberra.
Look at that. Your own bloody plaque, Tim.
I mean, you gotta be happy with that. We like having a plaque.
I bet. I mean, it's just, you know...
It'll come and go with state government.
Eventually it'll be pulled out.
Somebody will just say, "It's not relevant anymore."
But for now, it's a plaque. For now...
Right, let's move on.
Careful, don't go over the plaque. I'm sure that's a bad luck thing.
Can you take your brake off? 'Cause I don't know how to take it off.
I don't have brakes, Julia. He doesn't have 'em.
Can you teach someone to be funny?
Nobody teaches comedy in Australia.
Is that true? They don't. I'm the only one.
Do you love teaching? I do. I love teaching.
I love teaching comedy because they've never been taught.
They've never been told that comedy is a craft.
You're terrible at first, but it's like dentistry.
Nobody's a born dentist. (LAUGHS)
Nobody goes away from a dentist saying, "He's a natural."
You know, you just have to learn this stuff.
But it all comes back to the same things.
Comedy is surprising people with the truth.
And every 15 seconds, you surprise them with the truth.
Again and again. That's it.
Can a middle-aged man or a middle-aged woman,
can we be firebrands still?
Of course. That's what we're supposed to do.
Yeah.
I know people say they become more conservative as they get older,
but that's only because they own stuff and they don't want to lose it
but I look forward to being the angry old man
that young people roll their eyes at.
It's not our job, you and me,
just to make people feel good all the time.
It's our job to open people's eyes, and sometimes they don't like it.
Is growing old good? Yeah, much better.
At our time of life, you do own stuff.
People listen to you.
You've got a whole bunch of friends who can help you,
but most importantly you finally know who to love.
Is the MS irrelevant in a way? Yeah.
I mean, everybody's got something.
And if they don't think they have, they just haven't been told yet.
But I get wheeled around, which is an inconvenience for everybody else
'cause my legs are morons from there down.
But... I use it as a gimmick.
It's a way of having something most comedians don't have
when I get wheeled on stage by, you know, Mr McDermott.
We never have to cue up for customs at all.
They can't wait to get us out of the airport in one of these.
Now, although the world is getting more nervous,
so what I do is I employ a couple of techniques,
and the first one is very simple.
I use the tilt.
(AUDIENCE LAUGHS)
We usually end the episode
asking if you could say anything
to your 12-year-old self, what would it be?
But you answered that question on your own.
The other one we ask is what do you hope for in 10 years' time?
In 10 years' time, I'd like to be touring the world
with the Doug Anthony All Stars,
to continue teaching people how to write comedy,
and for... for a grand new project, whatever it is.
I don't know what it will be, but it'll be something
that today I know nothing about.
Well, Tim, to think that when I was 20, watching you on television,
that I would get the chance to interview you is mind-blowing.
So thank you. Thank you, Julia.
My pleasure. Is there anything you'd like to add?
Quiet, please. Keep it down.
We're filming here.
Leave a bit of room for Jesus, you two.
People of Canberra, if you're coming down off acid,
drink milk.
(LAUGHS) Help!
Police!
Julia Zemiro is radicalising me.
Help me! Help!
Captions by Ericsson Access Services
Copyright Australian Broadcasting Corporation