The South Coast News
One of the show's most popular scripted segments was "The South Coast News", a parody news bulletin read by real-life journalist and TV presenter Paul Murphy. It ran for several years in the late 1980s and early 1990s and two volumes of scripts were later published in book form, with illustrations by cartoonist Bill Leak, who had an enduring relationship with the duo.
The basic conceit of the sketch was that the small New South Wales south coast town of Ulladulla was heavily populated by famous Australian sporting and show business identities, that many of these celebrities owned businesses in the area or worked in various official capacities in the town, and that all were regularly involved in hilarious and often ribald misadventures.
Prominent recurring characters included the town's mayor, renowned TV composer and conductor Tommy Tycho, former TV wrestler Mario Milano, owner of the Bluebird Cafe, and former NSW Premier Barry Unsworth, owner of the disreputable 'Cardigan Club'. This fictional Ulladulla also boasted a colossal statue of long-distance swimmer Linda McGill ("The Big Linda", which stood astride the entrance to the boat harbour and featured a revolving restaurant in its head). All the streets were named after sporting or TV stars, and the local high school was named after rugby league player (Barry Beath).
Read more about this topic: This Sporting Life (radio Program)
Famous quotes containing the words south, coast and/or news:
“I don’t have any doubts that there will be a place for progressive white people in this country in the future. I think the paranoia common among white people is very unfounded. I have always organized my life so that I could focus on political work. That’s all I want to do, and that’s all that makes me happy.”
—Hettie V., South African white anti-apartheid activist and feminist. As quoted in Lives of Courage, ch. 21, by Diana E. H. Russell (1989)
“It cannot but affect our philosophy favorably to be reminded of these shoals of migratory fishes, of salmon, shad, alewives, marsh-bankers, and others, which penetrate up the innumerable rivers of our coast in the spring, even to the interior lakes, their scales gleaming in the sun; and again, of the fry which in still greater numbers wend their way downward to the sea.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is speckled with grime as if
Small print overspread it,
The news of a day I’ve forgotten
If I ever read it.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)