ABC TV’s ‘Gardening Australia’

Philip Roth’s ‘Everyman’

‘Commander in Chief’

Channel 7; Channel 9; Channel 10

Any poet could have told the ABC that with a name like Vulture its new arts program was bound to get negative feedback. A vulture is an ugly, disgusting creature whose presence lets you know your death is imminent.This may be why one blogger, having watched …

“Why are you wasting your time watching that appalling trash?” asked the music critic I recently got into a conversation with about Australian Idol. When I say “music critic” I mean someone who goes regularly to the high-end stuff, to recitals …

Among people who get their current affairs from the ABC or SBS, the consensus is that A Current Affair and Today Tonight rate their socks off by relying on stories about neighbourhood feuds, sex scandals, dodgy salesmen, weight loss, welfare cheats and …

Paradise Community Church sits, appropriately enough, on acres of prime real estate. On a sunny Sunday morning it’s hard to find a space in their massive car park. For my first and only attendance at this Assemblies of God stronghold – Adelaide’s …

In the course of her political career Pauline Hanson endured a range of unpleasantnesses, including death threats, jail strip-searches and the hurling into her face of unspeakable substances in public places. But the sight of Channel Nine’s Mike Munro …

Slick meets ick in ‘House’

On a Tuesday in June, only a day or two before it finally began to bucket down, an article appeared on page two of the Adelaide Advertiser headed: “Please adopt a starving goat.” Leesa Lewis, director of the Australian Association for Dairy Goats, …

Graham Kennedy was an eyes-popping perfectionist, a subversive pre-feminist, a rebel without any trousers on.

Tragically, Big Brother is back. As with Australian Idol, this show’s soundtrack of non-stop hysteria is provided by a mob of nine-year-olds leaping about and screeching as though their complimentary jumbo drink-bottles of red cordial have all been …

In a quiet Adelaide suburb on a sunny autumn day, Gwen Nitschke is sitting at her kitchen table. She is talking about her son, Philip, who for the past ten years has been campaigning in the cause of voluntary euthanasia, and in the meantime doing as much …

Andrew Denton and the art of interviewing