Thank The Lord For Your Presence # 20

Last night's final episode of Thank God You're Here (TGYH) for 2006 was fan-flippin'-tastic! In what has now officially become a TGYH tradition, the final episode of the season featured five special guests instead of the regular four, and was extended by an extra half hour. In alphabetical order, the special guests this time 'round were:


Hamish Blake


Tony Martin


Shaun Micallef


Frank Woodley


and Julia Zemiro

There were many amusing moments shared by the five guests and Shane Bourne during the ‘meet-and-greet’ moments out the front that are worth sharing with you now: Shaun mentioned his job on Vega breakfast radio, and Shane asked, “And you’re working with?”, to which Shaun repeated, “And I’m working with,” before blinking, adding, “Oh, sorry,” and giving the names of his co-hosts, Dave O’Neil and Denise Scott. Hamish (who was already wearing a latex mask over his face at the start of the show in preparation for his role as an old man which made him unrecognisable) was introduced by Shane before he turned to Frank and began introducing him – that is, until Frank interrupted, claiming to be Tony underneath a face mask similar to the one Hamish was wearing. “I’ll be playing Tony in his scene tonight – and I believe Tony will be playing Frank” to which Tony replied, “No, I’m Alan Brough.” Shane then asked Tony, “How’s Frank’s tour going, Alan?” and Tony replied, “It’s going really, really badly. They’ve got no new material and frankly they’re coasting on the goodwill of their audience. ” Tony then told us how, ever since his last appearance on the show as the inept superhero, ‘Flashman’, people on the street have been yelling out to him, “Oi! Captain Pissweak!” … although he then admitted that it may not actually have anything to do with him being on the show at all. Hamish then added that he was probably going to be referred to as Captain Weakbladder – Captain Pissweak “quite literally”.

The promos for the show promised us animals, children, pyrotechnics, explosions and surprises – and it didn’t disappoint (except possibly during the first scene, which was fairly ‘light-on’ as far as the above promises were concerned. And to make matters worse, one of my all-time favourites was the one lumbered with the duty of performing in what would easily come to be known as the most ‘forgettable’ scene of the night (simply because it lacked animals, children, pyrotechnics, explosions and surprises) … Mr Shaun Micallef.

What the scene did have, though, was a highly original entrance by ensemble cast member Ed Kavalee. After Shaun entered his scene (a scrub piece of bushland with a tent in the middle of it), we heard the noise of a helicopter and wind started blowing leaves around the scene. Shaun looked up into the lighting grid, but by doing so, missed Ed being rappelled rapidly (as if from the unseen helicopter) behind him. Turning, Shaun was startled by Ed’s sudden appearance, and jumped slightly in surprise. (That was the extent of the ‘pyrotechnics and surprises’ for Shaun’s scene – kinda lame, once you know what the other four got.) I liked how Shaun asked for water, was told the rescuers hadn’t brought any with him, and then angrily questioned that fact: “You didn’t think to bring any?!” His solution for how he’d survived so long was long, complicated and bizarre (as is all of his best humour!). It involved crawling inside the mouth of a “very accommodating” hibernating bear, sleeping in its stomach during the night, and then coming out “the other way” in the morning. He was “impressed with (him)self” when told he’d set out five days ago for an afternoon stroll and had ended up here, 80km from his starting point. When told there were 12 TV crews waiting for him back at base, and asked which one he wanted to do first, Shaun answered, “What’s the one Kochie does?” and Ed said, “Sunrise” (he even said it in italics!). Then you could see the panic set in on Shaun’s face, before he added, “I wanna do that one, ah, followed closely by several Channel Ten ones”. Once it was established that his wife had raised the alarm, it was obvious (if it hadn’t been from the start) what would happen next: a young woman emerged from Shaun’s tent and was revealed to be his girlfriend, although he feigned having forgotten her name before defending his actions (“In the wild there are no rules”), and then later claiming the pair had met inside the same hibernating bear (“What goes on inside the bear, stays in the bear”). Ed tried to ‘guilt’ Shaun, saying they’d spent millions of taxpayers’ money on the rescue mission, and asking what they should tell the public. “Well, tell them it was money well spent!” replied an indignant and ‘unrepentive’ Shaun, his arm around his girlfriend and a broad smile on his face. Suddenly, Shaun’s wife’s voice could be heard coming through Ed’s radio: “Honey, how are you feeling?” And Shaun’s reply was genius: “I’ve been, I’ve been feeling a lot, lately”.

Julia’s scene placed her on the set of This Is Your Life parody, ‘That Was Your Life’, as the recipient of the accolades and former TV co-host, turned well-renowned singer. It was difficult to do too much in this scene without completely contradicting every guess she made about each mystery voice that emanated from behind the door, but it was a good scene nevertheless. Julia’s fond memories of Aunty Pearl included her telling her to “dance, little fat one, dance!” Her guess at the show she’d debuted on (“Jeopardy!”) was quickly quashed and corrected as ‘Jackpot Bonanza’. Her co-host, her first husband Jack, couldn’t father children. The host asked her is she knew who was waiting outside the door. “Not Jack?” she asked. His face dropping from wide grin into deadly serious and respectful mode, the host answered, “No, Jack tragically passed away in 1988” – Julia’s response to this was superb: Turning to her ‘Aunty Pearl’, she asked, sotto voice, “That’s a shock – did you know that?” Jack’s replacement, 80s game show host extraordinaire Greg Evans, was her next surprise guest, who started telling an anecdote and tried to get Julia to finish it: “Once, before going on to tape a show, the zip on (Julia)’s dress broke …” and Julia, again using the sotto voice but this time looking sternly at Greg as if he was being indiscrete, said, “Well I hardly think this is the time to bring it up, do you?” Thinking quickly, Greg replied with a suggestive, “There was nothing going up!” Thinking even more quickly, Julia added derisively, “Well, no - clearly!” The host then began talking about her next marriage, and Julia said that they married on a golf course. The host, Simon Burke, cracked the gag, “I’m sure it was a hole in one”. Julia let slip that her second husband was an alcoholic, before her three daughters (one of whom was Asian) entered and Julia pretended to swan over them with pride. Greg tried comforting her at one point, but she snapped at him: “Get your hands off me!” When reminded that she used to introduce her guests with a song, she asked, “Did I? Oh yes, I remember now. Singing,” before being asked to sing some of her signature song, “I’ll Be Loving You” (which she made up on the spot quite well; her history on the stage as part of Eurobeat would have helped, here).


Celebrity guest Simon Burke
played the host of Julia's fictional
television show, That Was Your Life ...


... and now-disgraced celebrity radio
host Greg Evans played the part of Julia's
one-time TV game show co-host


Tony’s scene was up next, and he was highly enjoyable as always. Dressed as a Police SWAT officer, he emerged from backstage and told Shane he presumed he was a secondary school teacher, because that’s the kind of get-up that’s common for them to wear nowadays. Pyrotechnics and explosions featured heavily in his entrance (which sounds both extremely dangerous and ridiculously uncomfortable), with Ed smashing the blue door open with a battering ram, followed by another SWAT officer rappelling through a glass window on the set (which was an ordinary home, with a family of three watching TV on the couch), and then an additional door was blown off its hinges with an almighty bang. Interspersed between each of these three explosions was Tony’s dull and mildly congratulatory remarks, that went like this: BANG! “Right.” SMASH! “Well done.” KA-BOOM! “Yes, and just to be absolutely certain, the second bloke.” As you would, the frightened father immediately demanded, “What the hell is going on here?!”, to which Tony replied, “Renovation Rescue!”, before then putting a finger to his headset and saying, “Hang on a second, … yes, would you like the large Coke?” Ed told the family that their house had been “personally identified by Captain Pierce” (indicating Tony) as a terrorist base. The father exclaimed that they were just watching TV, to which Tony tauntingly replied, “What were you watching?! Aljazeerah, no doubt … probably … I’m guessing … no? Okay.” The father told him they’d actually been watching House & Garden. “Yeah, but suspiciously!” was Tony’s retort. He then pointed out that their underhanded dealings had begun with video piracy, citing their copy of the purportedly unreleased Anaconda 2 (but unfortunately for Tony this film has been released; under the title Anacondas), and the fact that they were members of the terrorist organization known as ‘Friends of the ABC’ (“Firing off all those angry letters to Backchat; you don’t think we know what you’re up to?”). The father asked if that was a crime, and Tony replied, “It is now!” Suddenly a cavalcade of additional personnel started flooding through the blown-in door, all in quick succession and requiring a new explanation from Tony as to what he’d asked them there for. It all started with the Chaplain, who Tony named Father Mulcahy, due to the fact that he was Captain Pierce (Hawkeye).* ‘Father Mulcahy’ was just there in case something went fatally wrong (at which point a cop with a German Shepherd on a leash entered), “… and to entertain the children, we brought a dog along”. To the cop holding the leash, he instructed him to take the dog for a walk and perform some dog tricks (“It takes the edge off the brutality, we find”). The final two cops to dart in through the exploded door held a trumpet and a trombone respectively, and when asked why he’d asked for the police band to be in attendance, Tony replied, “I just thought a couple of Nickelback numbers …”

* Actually, Tone, I think Ed was feeding you the line of being able to correct him and say that your full name was Captain Pierce-Week, as a throwback to your own gag from earlier in the night. It seemed too good to be true and I can’t believe you missed that. Well, I actually can – there was a lot going on there, so you’re excused!

Next we were finally treated to Hamish’s scene, and got to see his ‘old man’ make-up and full face mask in play at last. Entering what turned out to be his own lounge room (whether in a house or a nursing home was unclear) with a plastic bag of groceries, he encountered his adult daughter, her husband, and their teenage daughter, who had been waiting for him and were quite worried. When they greeted him with two-parts relief and one-part annoyance, he replied, “Yeah, well I’m not dead yet”. His daughter told him that his ‘favourite chair’ was waiting for him, indicating very roughly the two vacant chairs in front of the coffee table. Knowing that whichever one he chose would inevitably be the wrong one, Hamish cleverly replied, “Yes. What’ve you put biscuits on it for?”, and tried sweeping everything off the coffee table with his arm so he could sit on it. When his daughter moved him to one of the seats, he muttered, “No, that’s right, he can’t have his own favourite – we just want his money!” They asked him if he knew what day it was, and he replied, “It’s not V Day, or I’d be getting pissed at the RSL … (then he looked at each of the adults in turn) you’re here, you’re here … (then he looked at his granddaughter) … you ring a bell …” But he was clearly perplexed and troubled, thinking his granddaughter, Lisa, was a grandson. When he was corrected, he was very relieved, saying, “I was gonna say, he’s growing up to look like a bloody hoofta”. When his son-in-law suggested that it might be time to hand in his drivers licence, Hamish replied, “I could hand in my licence … sort of had my eye on the new MX5, though …” He denied having accidents on the road (“That’s how I meet women”), indicated that he tricks them into giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation so he can grab them and kiss them, and then began to crack on to his daughter, before checking which one of the adults he fathered and being disappointed by the answer. “Mind if I crack an Arrowroot?” he asked, before adding not-so-much under his breath: “… since I’m not cracking anything else!” Lisa then asked him some questions for her school assignment. What did he do during the war? “Hid, mostly.” Where did he get his medals from, then? He stole them from his mate Bob’s open casket funeral, obviously (and when he’s wearing the medals, he’s got a “ticket to ride”). How did Grandma die? That’s part of an ongoing investigation, and he’d prefer not to implicate himself in that one. Then suddenly, out of the blue, he fell asleep. It was great. Upon waking, he initially tried to grope his daughter before remembering who she was. Lisa’s questions continued: With no TV, what did people of his generation do to entertain themselves? “Mastur … just mass, really. Just church.” In one of the most difficult ‘tight spots’ anyone’s ever been on in the show, Hamish was prompted to tell a joke that had been started already by his daughter: Why did the train driver cross the road? Think about this for a second; how hard would it be to be given a joke and told to come up with a punchline that was both realistic in terms of the joke, but also had an additional layer of humour for the sake of the viewing audience? And on the spot? That’s a tall order indeed. So I thought Hamish handled the moment perfectly. Quickly thinking of a similar joke he already knew, he patronisingly corrected his daughter: “No, no, no – close” before re-telling it thus: “Why did the train go to the brothel?” When the adults began objecting to the nature of the joke with their young daughter in the room, he admonished them, “Nah, it’s alright – it’s a good one.” And the answer to the joke broke the place up: “To blow off a little steam”. I’m sure most of the laughter was just the audience responding in awe that he’d been able to come up with a workable joke on his feet, and also such a ‘blue’ one to be telling his young granddaughter. They then followed this mean feat by asking him to perform the spoons, so he took it to the next level: “There’s a track, winding back, lean over, see me crack …”


TGYH host, Shane Bourne


Idiot-savant judge
(minus the '-savant'),
Tom Gleisner


Frank was given a special entrance (as was Julia, earlier) and had to crawl on hands-and-knees onto the set, emerging from the captain’s quarters on board an 18th century ship (which was literally rocking from side to side as if being bucketed about on the waves of the open sea), complete with two sailors steering the ship on the platform above the door to the captain’s cabin. However, Frank took his sweet time emerging from the door, and when he finally did, his voice was heard well before he briefly popped his head out, barely looked around, and then disappeared again saying: “Um, is there any chance you could send me in another cabin boy? … Jeremy’s getting all ‘passive-aggressive’ on me.” It was another hysterical start to a scene from Frank! It was revealed that he was a Maritime Commodore in King George's Navy. He then took the wheel (“wheel”?! What am I, an idiot? - Don’t answer that!) and tried to “do a doughnut”. Another hilarious exchange came when ensemble cast member Daniel Cordeaux asked what Frank wanted them to do with the futtock shrouds. Frank’s reply: “Throw them on the futtick dead people”. Later on, when another ship was identified as being a frigate, Frank told them to “throw one of those frah’ken shrouds on it!”, before asking if that was what they were called, because it all seemed so long ago. When asked the name of his first ship, he replied, “Tom. It was a little wooden toy I had as a boy. But you mean the first ship I captained. That wasn’t a silly name like Tom, that a boy would name his ship! That … was Rick”. His plan for their voyage was to track the flight of Venus, and then discover the Great South Land – in much the same way that the Hamburglar had discovered hamburgers. When land was spotted, he tried to rally the troops with a chorus of “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie!”, but they didn’t appear to be familiar with the modern sporting ‘chant’ or ‘war-cry’. Strange, that. Then the frigate was spotted, and Frank’s first instinct was to try to ‘drag it’. Forgetting all that, he was suddenly overcome with an intense attraction to ensemble cast member Ed Kavalee, who did very well by not laughing or pushing him away when Frank embraced him and stared longingly into his eyes, their noses touching in an extended close-up. I actually wondered if Frank was going to kiss him (and maybe he did, but they had to cut it?), the spell only breaking when Frank yelled down to the door of his quarters: “Jeremy? I want you out within 15 minutes!” He was then questioned by his men for the sailors’ suspicions that Frank had brought a young woman onboard and (according to their superstitions) risked their lives. Frank admitted that he’d brought a young woman onboard, “… but you brought that sheep! Cut me a bit of slack, man!” When the cabin boy, ‘Jeremy’, emerged, it was ensemble cast member Rebekah Foord in ‘disguise’. Pointing first into the distance and then at ‘Jeremy’, Frank shouted, “Land … ho!” Then the moment ran away with him, and he yelled at his supposed ‘cabin boy’: “Oh, Jeremy, you’re a fantastic young man and I’m going to ROGER you within an inch of your life!” When things started going really badly, Frank ran off the set and onto the front of the stage where Shane was standing, while the two actors called out to him for help. Turning back to them, Frank shouted, “I know the captain shouldn’t desert his ship, but I’m getting out of here!” and ran off backstage.

There was only one pre-recorded bit in this season finale, but it was well worth the wait. An obvious parody of Survivor and its ilk, ‘Celebrity Island’ placed our five special guests on a beach, with three or so ensemble cast members amongst them. The piece had all the markings of an episode of Survivor; from the lone-person-to-camera interviews on the beach and in the jungle, to the challenges, the arguments, the Tribal Council, and the elimination. It was – quite simply – brilliant. Tony was asked what he thought the greatest challenge was in his time on the island, and he replied having to build that 2,000-seat athletics centre for schoolchildren. Hamish said he misses women, and that he brought fake tan along (he then showed us his pasty-white leg under his shorts). The ‘luxury item’ Shaun chose to bring with him was a teak sideboard. The skill Frank feels he brings to the group is that he’s really good at Sudoku. When doing the group challenge, Tony pointed at Julia and asked, “Have you always been on the island?” When she said yes, he turned to the others and asked, “Have you seen her before?” When interviewed about ‘Emma’ (one of the other ensemble cast members on ‘Celebrity Island’, Tony said she calls him The Pleasure Machine. We then cut to the two of them lying in a tent – shown in nightvision – and Emma asking Tony what she could offer him for her alliance. Tony replied that he could get her a hosting gig on Quizmania (another reference to a show that’s not on Network Ten! Although this one was a derogatory remark). In the same set-up, Shaun was caught telling Emma how he feels: “I have an attachment for you … it’s in my bag.” Back to the challenge, Frank kept trying to swim out to a boat that the cameraman kept trying to prevent appearing in frame (failing on a couple of occasions as we see that it’s quite busy wherever they are; about three different ships could be seen in the ocean at certain points). Frank then suggests building a raft so they can paddle out to the ship. The instructions on the challenge tell them to find a chest, and Hamish (pointing to Julia’s upper torso) boasts that he already found the chest two weeks ago. Upon discovering the hidden treasure chest buried in the sand, Frank suggests that it may be the septic. At Tribal Council, Hamish tells the smarmy host (Ed again) that he thinks he (Hamish) is an inspiration to Shaun, with his youth (“I often catch him thinking, ‘Oh, I wish I was back there’.”) The celebrities are told by the host that they need to select a new name for their tribe, before the host then asks, “Hamish?’ (for suggestions). Before he can answer, Shaun said, “Good name – all in favour of ‘Hamish’?” and the others all immediately agreed. When asked for her highlight of her time on the island so far, Julia answered that dancing naked one night with ‘Amber’ and ‘Clara’ (one of whom was actually ‘Emma’), where they found their inner strength was a definite highlight. After a beat, Tony, Frank, Shaun and Hamish all agreed: “That was a highlight, yes.” Then it was time to vote: Shaun voted for Frank, “because my hatred for him operates on a sub-atomic level”; Hamish tore his sheet of paper up into five or six pieces and wrote ‘Shaun’ on each of them, just to make sure that his own skin was safe (then walking back to the group, saying, “I didn’t vote for anyone; couldn’t do it”; Tony voted for Julia “because she will not stop plugging something called ‘RocKwiz’” (in the background, Julia started laughing at this); Julia voted for Hamish; and Frank voted for Tony “because I’m illiterate, and he’s the easiest one to draw” (showing us a caricature he’d drawn of Tony – and it was a very good one, too!). The ensemble cast members must have all voted for Hamish as well, because it was his name called out for elimination, although Hamish was adamant that he wasn’t going anywhere. “Hamish,” said Ed, “before you leave …” “I’m not leaving,” snapped an angry Hamish. Ed tried again: “The tribe has spoken,” and an irritable Hamish interjected with, “Well, they haven’t actually spoken at all, have they – they’ve written something.” Ed asked him if there was anything he wanted to say to the tribe before he extinguished his torch, and Hamish replied, “Alright – I pissed in the water.”

The group scene was another visit to the fictitious Sunday sports programme first featured in the sixth episode of the first season. Shaun was co-anchor with ensemble cast member Nicola Parry, and he started us off with an explanation of what fascinates the punters about Furlong Day: “People can’t get enough of the length of the fur”. He said it was the sport of kings, then checked with Nicola to see if that was right. Upon discovering that he was right, he was briefly surprised and then very pleased with himself (this whole bit was lifted from The Micallef P(r)ogram(me), incidentally. He was also asked to tell the viewers why the favourite had been scratched. Instead of saying the obvious and lame gag many might have gone with (that he was itchy), Shaun said it was because officials discovered that he had no legs, and was put down behind a very small screen – humanely and entertainingly for the benefit of the crowds – by strapping dynamite to him. Nicola said that the track had previously been classified as ‘dead’, but that it had now changed, throwing to Shaun for the rest of the sentence. “It’s now upgraded to reflex twitching,” was his immediate response. Cutting to Hamish in the bookies' pen, with a dead-pan Daniel Cordeaux standing behind him, Hamish reported that the mood was 'electric' ... getting a laugh because Daniel didn't react to that at all, even when Hamish turned to him expectantly. He reported that the horses wouldn't be using blinkers in the big race, but rather blindfolds. When asked about a mystery punter who'd won $50,000, Hamish said, "Yeah, I was wrapt ... I mean, we don't know who it was, but there no inside information - no investigation needed". Julia was standing in a tent with six models behind her, showing off the 'fashion on the field', but Julia was dead drunk, giving a very amusing 'report' (when we first cut to her, she was telling the models: "And then I said, I don't give a sh..." before noticing the camera was on her). When asked where she was, she didn't know. She said the hatwear of choice this year was animals, then realised it was feathers. She said the women behind her had worked on their outfits all year because they had nothing else to do but wait for Melbourne Cup Day (but her slurring made this an hysterical sentence to listen to!). Apparently the dresses had been made in a sheltered workshop, and when asked for her pick, she closed her eyes, waved her arm back and forth, and said, "Woooo, that one!" Tony was playing the tallest jockey in the history of the world, and said that his highlight so far was "lording it up over the midgets". He said he'd be attempting to tide his horse the wrong way around the track just to confuse the other horses, and said he'd just been disqualified for 10 years for riding a pantomime horse. Finally to Frank, who was in 'the stables' with a real horse, who he said was called 'Loves-to-be-ridden-ny'. Then, being Frank, he decided to ignore the question being asked of him and walk around the fence to mount the horse. As he struggled to get on top of the understandably (slightly) frightened creature (its minder was holding its reigns), Frank laughed at the camera, saying, "You know, behind this thin veneer of a happy smiling face, is a man who's s****ing himself!" Cutting back to him right at the close of the scene, he was asked what dramatic thing had just happened down there, and he immediately started answering in a slow, loud and - frankly - mentally-challenged-sounding voice: "I WAS KICKED IN THE HEAD! BUT IT'S MAKING ME FEEL BUOYANT AND OPTIMISTIC!"

And that was the show.

Just as I did last season, I’d like to list the ensemble cast members who’ve done an excellent job over the course of the season. Despite my misgivings with blocking, etc, which is the fault of the direction anyway and not a blight on the actors’ skills, they’ve constantly impressed me with their ability to keep things moving, keep the guest on their toes, and – above all – keep a straight face.


Heidi Arena


Daniel Cordeaux


Ed Kavalee


Nicola Parry


Andrew Bayly


Simon Dowling


Rebekah Foord


Lliam Amor


Ben Anderson


Russell Fletcher


Jason Geary


and Simon Russell
(no picture available)

Tony was declared the winner of the episode, and although I’ve read that others took exception to Shaun, Frank or Hamish not winning it, it’s been clear since Day One that the ‘winner’ is not necessarily the person most deserving of the win. It’s all political; it’s about who’s already won it and who won’t be back to win it another night. The other four had already won the night on a previous episode, so it was clear from the outset that Tony was going to win.

And anyway, I loved his scene (I loved them all, really), and was happy for him to win. He wasn’t terrible, and it was his ‘turn’.


Tony, Ed and BEVIS hang out after
the show to celebrate Tony's win

So here endeth series two. The show will definitely be back for a third season sometime in 2007, but who knows how much longer they’ll continue to produce it after that.

In the meantime, you can download and/or watch Tony's winning police home-invasion scene for yourself by visiting here (although over the summer, they'll just be using that site to promote the first season DVD boxset).


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