Thank The Lord For Your Presence # 14

Last night's episode of Thank God You're Here (TGYH) was a ripper (that's Aussie slang for 'bonza').

The line-up this week continued the season two trend of having some guests who've been on the show before, and at least one newbie to get their feet wet. This week, the returning guests were Angus Sampson, Fifi Box and Bob Franklin, while the new victim guest was Tahir Bilgiç (from SBS's Pizza). You may also know Tahir from the comedy circuit - especially if you hail from Sydney - where he's quite famous for his Turkish-themed stand-up routines.



(Oh yeah ... host Shane Bourne and judge Tom Gleisner were also present.)

I was quite impressed with the show this week, and even Fifi (of whom I grew a bit tired last season) was good enough to make me smile. Not go crazy about, but certainly smile. I'd love to see her radio co-host Marty Sheargold give it a go. I think he'd be fabulous (or completely die on stage - either way, a top night out!). Bob's introduction by Shane made me laugh. When Shane asked him to tell us a little about his new movie, Boytown, Bob replied that he didn't know, really - he wasn't paying much attention.

Bob started us off with the first scene of the night, appearing in golfing gear, which was then thrown on its head a little when - instead of walking onto a fake golfing green - he entered an office, where two women were waiting for him. One woman greeted him by asking if he'd forgotten the appointment, to which he replied, "No, ... no such ... luck." It turned out that the first woman was his marriage counsellor, and the other woman was his very pissed-off wife, Michelle. I thought Bob fell into the scene and the character of the heartless, philandering husband exceptionally well and quickly. When asked what the signs were of his marriage having problems, he said it was probably when he started bringing other women home. His wife said the final straw was when he started dating the babysitter. The counsellor asked why he did that, and he answered that the babysitter was so good with the kids, he thought, "Why not bring you in full time?" When asked, he said the marriage was working really well for him, and that he was first attracted to his wife Michelle when he thought she looked like she'd let him get away with anything. He also said that his love life was really good ... it's just a shame that Michelle wasn't more involved in it. When Michelle closed the session by saying she'd try to be more patient and understanding, he agreed, saying that he'd try to let her be more patient and understanding. I don't know how Heidi Arena and Nicola Parry managed to keep a straight face during the scene. His ability to be such a 'cad' and go along with the stories of infidelity (and what's more; add to them exponentially) made it hilarious to watch.

Angus was on next, and he never disappoints. He was playing the role of a breakfast radio co-host, and Ed Kavalee (whose day job is co-host on Tony Martin's Get This radio show) was one of the other DJs feeding him his lines. I didn't catch the name of (or recognise) the female co-host, but maybe she's another actual radio DJ I was meant to be able to identify. (Anyone??) Angus did very well with some rather hard prompts, particularly during the rapid-fire punchline bit, and the best included: "The latest from Ramsay Street" ... filling us in on what happened to Bouncer, complaining about paper trees - when you climb up or down them you get paper cuts, his impersonations of "Mr Chen", a Scottish chef and a Mexican dish-hand, offering a prize pack containing a schooner of ouzo, explaining away his 'distraction' by telling the woman he could see through her top, whinging that the rising price of petrol means that it'll soon be more expensive than ... "other things", giing us all an unwanted image of John Howard's chafing problem, and the station's call sign: 96.7: Good times, great hits, and ... "We hope you're not gay."

Just to ensure that newcomer Tahir could get the maximum amount of time to wet his pants while he waited backstage for the inevitable, Fifi went third. She was dressed up as a fairy, and turned out to be a children's party entertainer called Fairy Fiona (which is, incidentally, Fifi's real name ... well, not the 'Fairy' part). Upon entering, her co-entertainer asked her where Davey was. "Was I supposed to bring Davey?" Fifi asked. "Davey's the duck," came the reply, "He's for the act." Fifi gave the obvious (but still, very funny) reply: "Davey was for the act? I thought he was for dinner!" As others have already noted (on the TGYH LiveJournal site, amongst other places), her statement that she lived "in a big raccoon ... skin" was perplexing, but she made up for it by stalling when her co-entertainer asked her to perform her special welcome. "Have you done your special welcome yet?" she asked. "Mine comes after yours," came the reply - illiciting a rare laugh and applause for an ensemble cast member (I wonder if Nicola Parry was raked over hot coals later for stealing the attention for herself!). Both times Fifi was asked to come up with a rhyme or song, she actually did very well (it's not easy to create a rhyme on the spot, AND make it rhyme, AND make it funny), but possibly her best line of the scene was in explaining to the mother why nicotine gum was included in the children's party packs. "It's never too early to stop." Amen to that.

Tahir was finally given the stage and was wearing a graduation gown (but no mortarboard or wig, which should have indicated to him that he was a teacher, not a graduating student (or a lawyer as he implied to Shane before entering the scene). Especially since it turned out from what he said afterwards that he was actually a drama teacher by trade before giving it up to become a comic full time! But anyway, I digress. Upon finding out that he was the principal of a posh private school, he immediately fell into character by glaring at the three boys assembled on the stage to represent the student attending the parent information night. His 'character' seemed to slip a bit from stern headmaster to roguish street hoon in fancy dress, but it was still highly amusing and a fantastic effort for someone on their first TGYH experience. Parts of what he had to say reminded me of Habib, his Pizza character, and also of his stand-up routine, but you can't blame him for drawing from what he knows best. (I certainly didn't feel that he was copping out or cheating!) His opening school prayer was a classic: "Let us pray. [Pause.] That's it." And the school motto that ensemble cast member Daniel Cordeaux read out in Latin was translated by Tahir as: "Pay your fees or die". Something I've noticed the ensemble cast doing more of this season than last season is correcting the guest's answers - which is particularly annoying and unprofessional for improv when it doesn't actually matter to the purposes of the scene - and this happened again when Tahir explained what the three picture symbols of the school motto represented. He said that the first one (a picture of a man and a woman holding the hands of a child) was 'adoption', but Daniel corrected him, saying "community" ("Yeah, community adoption" said a quick-thinking Tahir in a tone that implied Daniel was an idiot), and he immediately picked up that whatever he said next was going to be 'blocked' (or contradicted), so his next answer, 'fighting' ("... for your school, for your rights") was followed by prompting Daniel's correction with the line, "... otherwise known as?" This simple observation, after only being blocked once, showed me how clever he was being. Even if the professional improv actor was being told to block Tahir's improv, Tahir knew enough to leave the door open for Daniel to be able to correct him and still make it look like part of the scene's 'reality'. (Either that, or he just fluked it.) Whichever it was, top marks to Tahir for that. It might sound like a small thing, but it showed that he knew exactly what he was doing. He did the same thing with the third picture of a hammer and a saw crossed over each other. (He said, "Never mix hammers and saws", followed by "... otherwise known as?" and Daniel provided the 'real' answer.) When addressing the three boys and asking them if they like tights (for the Shakespearean play they were going to be performing next year), he suddenly pointed to the kid on the end and snapped, "You! Pick up ten papers!", resulting in applause from the audience. And his final line, "Today's student, tomorrow's gang" was another brilliant (but self-referential) killer line. He did very well, and I was mighty impressed.

The two pre-recorded bits this week cast the guests as a dodgy dole bludger in a Centrelink office (which is the Australian government's job search service) and a police negotiatior in a hostage crisis. In the Centrelink scene, Fifi and Tahir had no really memorable lines, and Bob's only funny one was when he was asked to explain why he was applying for a disability benefit: "I'm an emotional cripple." Angus, meanwhile, checked out the Centrelink chick's butt (which I found amusing even though many may not agree), started trying to determine when the last time he'd held down a job must have been with the line, "Well, it was a leap year", and asked to borrow the guy's computer afterwards so he could check his email. In the police negotiator scene, I got one of my biggest laughs of the night when Angus stepped out of the arriving cop car, lent back in and said to the driver, "Thanks for the lift." When he held up the gun to show it to 'Kevin' (the suicidal target), he yelled out, impressed, "Hey Kevin! Pump action!" When Kevin's wife arrived on the scene, he was condemning of her dress sense, saying, "Of course he's upset! He's coming home to this!" When working out if they can shoot him in the arm to bring him down, he asked Kevin over the megaphone if he was left- or right-handed, and then he finished by telling the cops around him that whoever managed to get his left shoulder would get $50 from him. Very good stuff. Again, nothing Tahir said amused me too much (but I certainly didn't think he 'bombed', or anything). Fifi's best line was in telling Kevin's wife - very sincerely and sympathetically - that she (Kevin's wife) should tell Kevin that the police will shoot him. And Bob was highly amusing when he was going on and on about the forms that had supposedly set Kevin off in the first place. "How many times do I have to say 'forms' before somebody gets me some forms?" He also made me laugh when he talked to the cops around him about their training: "Let's hope that training pays off. It was a lot of laughs at the time. A lot of laughs. Too many laughs, I said." Just the idea that his character thought that was the right time to be lecturing the other cops on taking their training too lightly was enough to have me giggling aloud for a few minutes.

The group scene was set in the ficticious (but familiar) Big Big Burgers fast food chain we first saw the other week (and I suspect will become a recurring setting to represent any 'fast food' type situations), and featured Angus as the Junior Store Manager, Bob as the drive-thru operator, Fifi as an order-taker (?) and Tahir as the giant burger mascot thing. He looked very funny (and what an expensive costume to create just for that one scene - you could tell it wasn't cheap by the way it squeezed through the door!), and immediately made good use of this fact by answering his first question ("How would you describe your role in the store?") thus: "Crap." His other golden lines included completing the store's slogan, "The burgers don't just taste great, they're" ... "Fat." Fifi was the queen of the bleeding obvious in this scene. When asked what they ask their customers, she replied uncertainly, "Would you like to buy something?" Angus was highly amusing when he was told that his job as Junior Store Manager was a big position and he replied "Not as big as I initially thought". He then proceeded to tell the others that for every dollar the company made, he'd give them fifty cents. This was questionable enough, but when he continued to explain how he'd overcharge some customers, not ring it up, pocket the cash, and then slip it to them after the shift (all in front of the manager), it was most amusing indeed. His choice of 'incentive' gift (a single rubber glove) that he handed out to them all was great ... and his advice to keep up the good work and they'll get the other one was golden. When they all started to sing the store's jingle ("Welcome to Big Big Burgers, welcome to Big Big Burgers, welcome to Big Big Burgers, welcome to Big Big Burgers, ..."), Angus broke in by saying, "That's the problem, I think; it just goes on and on." Meanwhile, Bob amused me greatly by playing the role of misguided drive-thru operator with aplomb. When asked how he was going in the role, he replied cheerily, "I couldn't be happier", as if the job was the best thing that's ever happened to him. He was then asked what was so good about it, and he answered, "Lots of fresh air by the window there, and I feel like I'm making a difference." Goodness knows what he imagined he might be making a difference to, but whatever it was, it had me laughing out loud (or 'LOL' as you lot would probably call it). The prompt that was given, concerning the store's guarantee ("What about our money back guarantee? What do we offer our customers?"), had Fifi replying bewilderedly, "Their money back?", which made perfect sense but her obvious fear of this being too simple an answer was apparent in her tone, and that made it funny. When that reply was followed with, "If ...?", Tahir finished, "... they spew." Perfect.

An 'honorable mention' must also go to Angus for his conversation with Shane before they were all sent backstage to prepare for their final group challenge. Talking about Freddie Mercury (who it's true Angus did resemble quite a lot with his hair cut and coloured the way it was), Angus said, "He was born in Zanzibar," to which Shane replied, "Wasn't he Mauritian?" Obviously out of his league and unable to argue the point, Angus shrugged and said casually (and in a tone that implied Shane was being unnecessarily cruel to point out his mistake), "Close enough."

Bob won, but Angus or Tahir could easily have been awarded the prize as well. I think the reasoning used here (if any) was that Angus has won it before (TWICE, actually), Tahir will hopefully be back, and Fifi ... well, ... Fifi said she lived in a big raccoon ... skin.

One other point: I've been very grateful that the creators have so far resisted the very uncreative urge to have the guest finish their scenes by being asked to dance. True, Josh Lawson imitated Shakira when he showed the English exploring professors how the African tribe he'd visited had 'moved' in their tribal dance, but it wasn't the same thing and it wasn't used to end the scene (which, IMHO, is when the idea's at its weakest). Apart from that, no one has been forced to dance yet! It makes me very happy and leaves me wondering whether or not anyone from Working Dog has been here to read my reviews of season one to take notes ... (not really, I know they wouldn't). But hopefully this trend will continue, although with Anthony (The Blue Wiggle) featuring on next week's show, it's quite possible that they'll resort to a dancing move after all. Still, that's five episodes in, so it's great to see them give that idea (which I think they over-used in season one) a bit of a rest for at least the first four episodes of season two.

Anyway, I quite enjoyed this episode, and watching it the second time through (as I do each week so I can take notes) was just as rewarding as the first time. But it usually is. (Also, I can fast forward through Tom's "Dad Jokes" that way.)

This week, you can watch and/or download Bob Franklin's marriage counselling scene for yourself by visiting this site.


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