Grahame Bond (actor)
Encyclopedia
Grahame Bond is an Australian actor, writer, director, musician and composer who began his career in entertainment at University of Sydney
in the 1960s as a founding student member of the Sydney University Architecture Revue, which included his university friends Geoffrey Atherden
(writer Mother and Son
, Grass Roots), Peter Weir
(director Gallipoli
, The Truman Show
), Peter Best
(composer Crocodile Dundee
, Wildside
) and Rory O'Donoghue. Bond graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1967 and began tutoring in design at Sydney University in the late 1960s, although his performing career soon took over and he spent much of the next two decades writing and performing on TV, radio and the stage.
Following the success of the 1967 Sydney University Architecture Revue "The Great Wall of Porridge", Bond and others (including Atherden and Weir) were invited to stage a professional revue for the PACT Theatre Company and Sydney's Cellblock Theatre, called Balloon Dubloon which (at the request of festival director Sir Robert Helpmann) was also staged at the Adelaide Festival. In 1969, soon after Balloon Dubloon Bob Allnutt of the PACT Theater Company—who was also working for the ABC's religious affairs department—he commissioned Bond and Weir to make a one-hour special, Man on a Green Bike, which was Bond's first TV appearance. In 1970 Bond wrote and performed in another successful comedy revue, Hamlet On Ice.
In 1971 Peter Weir wrote and directed his first short feature film, a surreal black comedy called Homesdale
, with an ensemble cast that included rising actress Kate Fitzpatrick
. In the film Bond played Mister Kevin, the first incarnation of the popular Aunty Jack Show character Kev Kavanagh. Soon after Homedsale Bond and Weir were asked to create a children's radio series for the ABC, to replace the long-running Argonauts Club
. It was for this series that Bond created the gravel-voiced tranvestite character Aunty Jack, who was based on an uncle whom he had disliked as a child.
In 1972 Bond, O'Donoghue, Weir and Atherden were commissioned by the new head of ABC TV comedy, Maurice Murphy
, to create a new short sketch comedy series, The Aunty Jack Show
, based around the Aunty Jack character; it premiered in early 1972 with Bond, O'Donoghue, Sandra McGregor, John Derum
(Series 1) and Garry McDonald
(Series 2) as the main performing team. Despite a rash of early complaints—notably about Aunty Jack's gender identity, her frequent use of the word "bloody" and her habit of punching everyone – The Aunty Jack Show
soon found a loyal audience and became one of the most popular comedy series in ABC history.
As well as writing many sketches and co-writing all the original music with Rory O'Donoghue, Bond played many recurring and occasional characters including Aunty Jack, rock'n'roll butcher Kev Kavanagh and nervous folk singer Errol. Two series of Aunty Jack were made in 1972–73 and 1973–74 and in March 1975 Bond revived Aunty Jack for a special that launched colour TV broadcasting on the ABC. The Aunty Jack team also undertook a successful concert tour during 1974 and, boosted by the popularity of the show, the Aunty Jack theme song (Australia's first picture disc
single) went to #1 on the Australian pop chart, followed by a successful LP based on the show, Aunty Jack Sings Wollongong
.
Following Aunty Jack, Bond did considerable work in TV, radio and theatre. His TV credits include the Aunty Jack spinoffsWollongong the Brave
(1974), Flash Nick from Jindavick (1974) and the ill-fated The Off Show (1977). On radio, Bond, O'Donoghue and McDonald continued their partnership with the weekly comedy program Nude Radio, which aired on the ABC's newly-established rock radio station 2JJ (Double Jay) in Sydney during 1975. Bond's theatrical credits include the popular Shakespearean parody Boys Own McBeth, which toured Australia and the United States in the late 1970s. In the 1980s he wrote and directed the comedy musical Captain Bloody for the Elizabethan Theatre Trust.
Although the series made him a star and Aunty Jack is now widely acknowledged as one of the milestones in Australian comedy, the Aunty Jack character became something of a burden for Bond; his TV career after Aunty Jack was also increasingly hampered by conflicts with conservative elements in the ABC, particularly after the departure of Maurice Murphy, who had consistently championed and protected Bond and his colleagues from management interference.
These problems culminated in a controversial incident in 1977 which led Bond and O'Donoghue to sever their association with ABC-TV. On the night of the first episode of Bond and O'Donoghue's new sketch series The Off Show, the ABC's newly appointed head of comedy Alan Bateman ordered the program to be pulled from the schedule half an hour before it was due to go to air, and he then destroyed the tape, reportedly because he was offended by a Bill Harding-penned religious parody sketch entitled "Leave It To Jesus". The remaining episodes of the series were subsequently screened as The Of Show. The only surviving artefact of the erased program is the theme song for the "Leave It To Jesus" sketch, which was released in 2006 as a bonus track on the CD reissue of Aunty Jack Sings Wollongong.
Although Bond returned to the ABC briefly in 1985 to host a short-lived comedy series, News Free Zone, his unhappiness over the presumed loss of several episodes of Aunty Jack, combined with The Off Show incident, effectively ended his relationship with the ABC. As a result, the ABC was for many years unable to release The Aunty Jack Show to home video because Bond and O'Donoghue refused to agree to the licencing of their music rights over the series. Fortunately, the missing episodes were relocated in the early 2000s, Bond and O'Donoghue reconciled with the ABC, and the complete, restored series of The Aunty Jack Show and Wollongong the Brave
were released on DVD in 2005/2006.
In 1990, Bond opened his own advertising agency, Bond Strohfeldt, with clients including Daihatsu, Bridgestone
, Virgin and Disney. He sold the business in 1996 in order to travel. His journeys included trekking in Nepal
, canoeing in Kakadu
, cycling from Hanoi
to Saigon, and archaeological excavations in Jordan
, Cyprus and Syria
. In the early 2000s Bond filmed a documentary in Papua New Guinea titled The Big Chief.
In the 1990s Bond hosted the Channel Seven
game show Whose House is it Anyway, and was a presenter on the popular Seven lifestyle series Better Homes and Gardens for six years.
Internationally, he is best known for his recurring role as The Ancient One in the first two seasons of the Beastmaster
television series in 1999 and 2000. In 1977, he appeared as Aunty Jack on British television in Not The Aunty Jack Show for London Weekend Television
.
On March 30, 2006 he and Rory O'Donoghue undertook a national tour of their new stage show The Aunty Jack Show and Tell, to promote the release of the Aunty Jack DVDs.
Robert Askin's
retirement from politics was greeted on This Day Tonight
by the cast of The Aunty Jack Show
, with a reworded version of "Farewell, Aunty Jack":
In October 2011, Bond released the book "Jack of All Trades Mistress of One" he had written himself.
University of Sydney
The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...
in the 1960s as a founding student member of the Sydney University Architecture Revue, which included his university friends Geoffrey Atherden
Geoffrey Atherden
Geoffrey John Atherden, AM, is an Australian television writer, best known for the sitcom Mother and Son. He also wrote the sitcom Grass Roots and the mockumentary BabaKiueria, and contributed to The Aunty Jack Show....
(writer Mother and Son
Mother and Son
Mother and Son is a Logie Award-winning Australian television sitcom produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation from 16 January 1984 until 21 March 1994. The show stars Ruth Cracknell, Garry McDonald, Henri Szeps and Judy Morris...
, Grass Roots), Peter Weir
Peter Weir
Peter Lindsay Weir, AM is an Australian film director. After playing a leading role in the Australian New Wave cinema with his films such as Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave and Gallipoli, Weir directed a diverse group of American and international films—many of them major box office...
(director Gallipoli
Gallipoli (1981 film)
Gallipoli is a 1981 Australian film, directed by Peter Weir and starring Mel Gibson and Mark Lee, about several young men from rural Western Australia who enlist in the Australian Army during the First World War. They are sent to Turkey, where they take part in the Gallipoli Campaign. During the...
, The Truman Show
The Truman Show
The Truman Show is a 1998 American satirical comedy-drama film directed by Peter Weir and written by Andrew Niccol. The cast includes Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank, as well as Laura Linney, Noah Emmerich, Ed Harris and Natascha McElhone...
), Peter Best
Peter Best (composer)
Peter Best is an award-winning Australian film composer who has contributed to such films as Doing Time for Patsy Cline , Muriel's Wedding , Crocodile Dundee , Crocodile Dundee II , Bliss and The Adventures of Barry McKenzie...
(composer Crocodile Dundee
Crocodile Dundee
"Crocodile" Dundee is a 1986 Australian comedy film set in the Australian Outback and in New York City. It stars Paul Hogan as the weathered Mick Dundee and Linda Kozlowski as Sue Charlton....
, Wildside
Wildside (TV drama)
Wildside is an Australian police procedural television series broadcast on the ABC from 1997 to 1999.The show consisted of a one hour format that followed police interactions in inner Sydney. It starred Rachael Blake, Tony Martin, Richard Carter and Alex Dimitriades...
) and Rory O'Donoghue. Bond graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1967 and began tutoring in design at Sydney University in the late 1960s, although his performing career soon took over and he spent much of the next two decades writing and performing on TV, radio and the stage.
Following the success of the 1967 Sydney University Architecture Revue "The Great Wall of Porridge", Bond and others (including Atherden and Weir) were invited to stage a professional revue for the PACT Theatre Company and Sydney's Cellblock Theatre, called Balloon Dubloon which (at the request of festival director Sir Robert Helpmann) was also staged at the Adelaide Festival. In 1969, soon after Balloon Dubloon Bob Allnutt of the PACT Theater Company—who was also working for the ABC's religious affairs department—he commissioned Bond and Weir to make a one-hour special, Man on a Green Bike, which was Bond's first TV appearance. In 1970 Bond wrote and performed in another successful comedy revue, Hamlet On Ice.
In 1971 Peter Weir wrote and directed his first short feature film, a surreal black comedy called Homesdale
Homesdale
Homesdale is a 1971 Australian film directed by Peter Weir. Homesdale is a black comedy about visitors at a guest-house acting out their violent private fantasies and games under the control of the house staff....
, with an ensemble cast that included rising actress Kate Fitzpatrick
Kate Fitzpatrick
Kate Fitzpatrick is an Australian-based television, film and theatre actress.-Career:...
. In the film Bond played Mister Kevin, the first incarnation of the popular Aunty Jack Show character Kev Kavanagh. Soon after Homedsale Bond and Weir were asked to create a children's radio series for the ABC, to replace the long-running Argonauts Club
Argonauts Club
The Argonauts Club was an Australian children's radio program, first broadcast in 1933 on ABC Radio in Melbourne. Its format was devised by Nina Murdoch who had run the station's Children's Hour on 3LO and stayed on when that station was taken over by the Australian Broadcasting Commission...
. It was for this series that Bond created the gravel-voiced tranvestite character Aunty Jack, who was based on an uncle whom he had disliked as a child.
In 1972 Bond, O'Donoghue, Weir and Atherden were commissioned by the new head of ABC TV comedy, Maurice Murphy
Maurice Murphy
Maurice Harrison Murphy MBE was a British musician who was Principal Trumpet of the London Symphony Orchestra from 1977 to 2007....
, to create a new short sketch comedy series, The Aunty Jack Show
The Aunty Jack Show
The Aunty Jack Show was a Logie Award–winning Australian television comedy series that ran from 1972 to 1973. Produced by and broadcast on ABC-TV, the series attained an instant cult status that persists to the present day....
, based around the Aunty Jack character; it premiered in early 1972 with Bond, O'Donoghue, Sandra McGregor, John Derum
John Derum
John Derum is an Australian actor for stage, film and television. He has also directed and produced for theatre companies throughout Australia and for television...
(Series 1) and Garry McDonald
Garry McDonald
Garry George McDonald, AO is an Australian stage and screen actor.-Early life and career:McDonald was born in Sydney and was educated at Cranbrook School and National Institute of Dramatic Art....
(Series 2) as the main performing team. Despite a rash of early complaints—notably about Aunty Jack's gender identity, her frequent use of the word "bloody" and her habit of punching everyone – The Aunty Jack Show
The Aunty Jack Show
The Aunty Jack Show was a Logie Award–winning Australian television comedy series that ran from 1972 to 1973. Produced by and broadcast on ABC-TV, the series attained an instant cult status that persists to the present day....
soon found a loyal audience and became one of the most popular comedy series in ABC history.
As well as writing many sketches and co-writing all the original music with Rory O'Donoghue, Bond played many recurring and occasional characters including Aunty Jack, rock'n'roll butcher Kev Kavanagh and nervous folk singer Errol. Two series of Aunty Jack were made in 1972–73 and 1973–74 and in March 1975 Bond revived Aunty Jack for a special that launched colour TV broadcasting on the ABC. The Aunty Jack team also undertook a successful concert tour during 1974 and, boosted by the popularity of the show, the Aunty Jack theme song (Australia's first picture disc
Picture disc
Picture discs are gramophone records that show images on their playing surface, rather than being of plain black or coloured vinyl.-Development:...
single) went to #1 on the Australian pop chart, followed by a successful LP based on the show, Aunty Jack Sings Wollongong
Aunty Jack Sings Wollongong
Aunty Jack Sings Wollongong is an album released in 1974, as a spin-off from the cult ABC Television show Aunty Jack. It contains a mixture of songs, and sketches, and along with the single Farewell Aunty Jack is the only audio release from the Aunty Jack crew.-Track listing:The album follows the...
.
Following Aunty Jack, Bond did considerable work in TV, radio and theatre. His TV credits include the Aunty Jack spinoffsWollongong the Brave
Wollongong the Brave
Aunty Jack's Wollongong the Brave is a collection of four comedy specials derived from the Australian television series, The Aunty Jack Show. The fourth and final episode was the precursor to The Norman Gunston Show. The episodes were filmed in 1974 and were aired during 1975...
(1974), Flash Nick from Jindavick (1974) and the ill-fated The Off Show (1977). On radio, Bond, O'Donoghue and McDonald continued their partnership with the weekly comedy program Nude Radio, which aired on the ABC's newly-established rock radio station 2JJ (Double Jay) in Sydney during 1975. Bond's theatrical credits include the popular Shakespearean parody Boys Own McBeth, which toured Australia and the United States in the late 1970s. In the 1980s he wrote and directed the comedy musical Captain Bloody for the Elizabethan Theatre Trust.
Although the series made him a star and Aunty Jack is now widely acknowledged as one of the milestones in Australian comedy, the Aunty Jack character became something of a burden for Bond; his TV career after Aunty Jack was also increasingly hampered by conflicts with conservative elements in the ABC, particularly after the departure of Maurice Murphy, who had consistently championed and protected Bond and his colleagues from management interference.
These problems culminated in a controversial incident in 1977 which led Bond and O'Donoghue to sever their association with ABC-TV. On the night of the first episode of Bond and O'Donoghue's new sketch series The Off Show, the ABC's newly appointed head of comedy Alan Bateman ordered the program to be pulled from the schedule half an hour before it was due to go to air, and he then destroyed the tape, reportedly because he was offended by a Bill Harding-penned religious parody sketch entitled "Leave It To Jesus". The remaining episodes of the series were subsequently screened as The Of Show. The only surviving artefact of the erased program is the theme song for the "Leave It To Jesus" sketch, which was released in 2006 as a bonus track on the CD reissue of Aunty Jack Sings Wollongong.
Although Bond returned to the ABC briefly in 1985 to host a short-lived comedy series, News Free Zone, his unhappiness over the presumed loss of several episodes of Aunty Jack, combined with The Off Show incident, effectively ended his relationship with the ABC. As a result, the ABC was for many years unable to release The Aunty Jack Show to home video because Bond and O'Donoghue refused to agree to the licencing of their music rights over the series. Fortunately, the missing episodes were relocated in the early 2000s, Bond and O'Donoghue reconciled with the ABC, and the complete, restored series of The Aunty Jack Show and Wollongong the Brave
Wollongong the Brave
Aunty Jack's Wollongong the Brave is a collection of four comedy specials derived from the Australian television series, The Aunty Jack Show. The fourth and final episode was the precursor to The Norman Gunston Show. The episodes were filmed in 1974 and were aired during 1975...
were released on DVD in 2005/2006.
In 1990, Bond opened his own advertising agency, Bond Strohfeldt, with clients including Daihatsu, Bridgestone
Bridgestone
The is a multinational rubber conglomerate founded in 1931 by in the city of Kurume, Fukuoka, Japan. The name Bridgestone comes from a calque translation and transposition of ishibashi, meaning "stone bridge" in Japanese....
, Virgin and Disney. He sold the business in 1996 in order to travel. His journeys included trekking in Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
, canoeing in Kakadu
Kakadu National Park
Kakadu National Park is in the Northern Territory of Australia, 171 km southeast of Darwin.Kakadu National Park is located within the Alligator Rivers Region of the Northern Territory of Australia. It covers an area of , extending nearly 200 kilometres from north to south and over 100 kilometres...
, cycling from Hanoi
Hanoi
Hanoi , is the capital of Vietnam and the country's second largest city. Its population in 2009 was estimated at 2.6 million for urban districts, 6.5 million for the metropolitan jurisdiction. From 1010 until 1802, it was the most important political centre of Vietnam...
to Saigon, and archaeological excavations in Jordan
Jordan
Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...
, Cyprus and Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
. In the early 2000s Bond filmed a documentary in Papua New Guinea titled The Big Chief.
In the 1990s Bond hosted the Channel Seven
Seven Network
The Seven Network is an Australian television network owned by Seven West Media Limited. It dates back to 4 November 1956, when the first stations on the VHF7 frequency were established in Melbourne and Sydney.It is currently the second largest network in the country in terms of population reach...
game show Whose House is it Anyway, and was a presenter on the popular Seven lifestyle series Better Homes and Gardens for six years.
Internationally, he is best known for his recurring role as The Ancient One in the first two seasons of the Beastmaster
BeastMaster (TV series)
BeastMaster is a Canadian television series that aired from 1999 to 2002. It was loosely based on a 1982 MGM movie The Beastmaster. The series aired for three complete seasons...
television series in 1999 and 2000. In 1977, he appeared as Aunty Jack on British television in Not The Aunty Jack Show for London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television was the name of the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties including south Suffolk, middle and east Hampshire, Oxfordshire, south Bedfordshire, south Northamptonshire, parts of Herefordshire & Worcestershire, Warwickshire, east Dorset and...
.
On March 30, 2006 he and Rory O'Donoghue undertook a national tour of their new stage show The Aunty Jack Show and Tell, to promote the release of the Aunty Jack DVDs.
Robert Askin's
Robert Askin
Sir Robert William Askin GCMG, was an Australian politician and the 32nd Premier of New South Wales from 1965 to 1975, the first representing the Liberal Party of Australia. He was born in 1907 as Robin William Askin, but always disliked his first name and changed it by deed poll in 1971...
retirement from politics was greeted on This Day Tonight
This Day Tonight
This Day Tonight was an Australian Broadcasting Corporation current affairs program of the late 1960s and early 1970s.- Overview :...
by the cast of The Aunty Jack Show
The Aunty Jack Show
The Aunty Jack Show was a Logie Award–winning Australian television comedy series that ran from 1972 to 1973. Produced by and broadcast on ABC-TV, the series attained an instant cult status that persists to the present day....
, with a reworded version of "Farewell, Aunty Jack":
In October 2011, Bond released the book "Jack of All Trades Mistress of One" he had written himself.
- Farewell Robin A,
- We think you've had your day
- Though you're four foot three
- You don't do much for me
- You're short, round and fat
- A pudden in a hat,
- There's a scream as you plummet away.
External links
- The Aunty Jack/Grahame Bond Ography
- Grahame Bond mini-bio on IMDB
- The Aunty Jack Show and Tell And turn the sound on... or I'll rip your bloody arms off!