SHAUN MICALLEF'S ONLINE WORLD AROUND HIM                          Back           Home
	Laughter in the Court By Kylie Miller The Age 30 January 2003 Shaun Micallef is getting old - too old to keep doing his own comic stunts, he tells Kylie Miller. Sitting in the overgrown backyard of a suburban Melbourne home, his leg propped on a stool before him, Shaun Micallef winces in pain. A couple of hours ago, while filming a scene for his new ABC sitcom, Welcher & Welcher, Micallef slipped while running across the road and wrenched his knee. It's swollen badly and throbbing. And so he sits chatting, in his boxer shorts, boots and barrister's robes, waiting for an icepack. For the third time in half an hour, he mentions his age. There's a clock ticking on one's ability to perform physical comedy, he reckons, and his time is approaching. When he writes the second series - all involved in Welcher & Welcher are confident the series will live beyond its current eight episodes - it will be measured, sedate and less frenetic. Transitional, he says. "I'm 40 years old and I'm not going to be able to fall over and run around." "You can fall over," his co-star and long-time collaborator, Francis Greenslade, adds helpfully, from his neighbouring perch. Micallef gives a wry grin. "Yeah, I won't be able to get up. I can fall over very happily, clutching my heart and having the blood draining from my face I suspect." Even through his pain, Micallef makes us laugh. It's not so much what he says, but the way it comes out, the twist of an expressive face. "His comedy makes me laugh till I cry," says Micallef's friend and Welcher & Welcher co-producer Nick Murray. "He's very physical and he's got a great mind so he's very good with physical comedy as well as verbal comedy and he has a really good sense of the absurd." Former ABC comedy chief and Welcher's executive producer, Geoff Portmann, concurs. "As a performer and as a comic, he's probably one of the most outstanding we have in the country at the moment because of his originality and the scope of his ideas." The man could be funny telling the time, says actor William McInnes. The pair met in the corridors at Seven's South Melbourne studios while Micallef was working on Full Frontal and McInnes on Blue Heelers. They have since worked together a few times - most famously as Laura Gibson's love rivals in the ABC drama SeaChange, but also in Blue Heelers (Micallef played a shonky producer in a guest role) and later in his sketch series, The Micallef Program. McInnes also pops up in Micallef's latest venture. When he was approached to appear in an episode of Welcher & Welcher as Sir Robert "Call-me-Bob" Jefferson, McInnes delayed a family holiday to fit in the two-day shoot. "I've just sat around on his shows while he's funny. Usually at my expense," McInnes says with a chuckle. "He's a very funny bloke and he's very smart." Growing up in Adelaide, Micallef was always interested in comedy. As a child surrounded by a "funny mother, a funny grandfather and a funny uncle", he recognised early the value in being able to make his family laugh. He reckons his humour was largely "programmed" by his mother's taste, the product of her encouraging him to listen to comedians such as The Goons and Peter Sellars. She remains a keen fan and critic. "I think she worries a little bit. If I go a little bit overboard in terms of taste she might be a little bit concerned about what her friends think. She often sees something and rings to say she thought something was funny. If she doesn't ring up then I know she's waiting to hear what her friends say!" A bright student, Micallef studied law at Adelaide University - mainly because he could - but devoted his spare time to the institution's Footlights drama club. It was there he met Murray, Greenslade and writer Gary McAffrie, with whom he continues to work. "Shaun's arrival forced me out," Murray quips. "I had been in the Footlights Club, only I realised that people like Shaun were much funnier than me." After graduation, Micallef chose the stability of the legal profession but continued writing - short sketches, plays and radio spots mostly. In 1990, he and Greenslade came to Melbourne and "did some stand-up around the place ... It was me testing the water." Then he went back to insurance law. Three years later, frustrated by her husband's boredom and indecision, Leandra Micallef drew a cross on their calendar and told him to make up his mind. If he chose to stay with law, he couldn't mention comedy after that date. "It was November 1993. It was good for both of us. She went off and changed her business and I went off and tested the waters. I have no doubt that it was a decision made entirely because I was in a strong relationship. I probably wouldn't have made it myself. When you think back on it, it's quite a stupid decision to make." It changed the course of their lives. The couple considered moving to Sydney so Micallef could enroll in the Australian Film and Television School. But his old Footlights connections paid off when McAffrie and Murray, both working at Melbourne's Artists Services, convinced Full Frontal producer Andrew Knight to look over their mate's work. Micallef was hired to write sketches for $120 a week. "He sent over a couple of sketches which were pretty funny and I was getting desperate for good writers. I offered him about 100th of his existing salary," Knight recalls. Six months later Knight had moved on and McAffrie and Micallef were co-producing Full Frontal. Micallef also joined the cast. "I think that was the first time the ratings dipped alarmingly," Micallef says, with a wry smile. "I don't know if that was coincidental. It became a bit strange, which we both liked." Knight says the dip coincided with a shift away from the show's traditionally broad-based humour. "Their humour is so idiosyncratic and brilliant. They just wanted to do their own thing. Some of the most interesting stuff from the whole series went into it (while they were in charge)." The third series of The Micallef Program (or Pogram as it was called), is "as innovative comedy" as Australia has produced, Knight believes. "Television in this country has been hideously timid for a long time and I think he pushes it and I think that is exactly what it needed. He's just one of those people you should just give the money to and say, 'Go away and do it please'." Knight also gave Micallef his first serious acting role, famously asking him to play "the most boring man in the world" in SeaChange. His role in SeaChange, coupled with his critically acclaimed gig hosting the 2001 Logie awards, introduced him to a mainstream Australian audience. "If I'd given it to just an ordinary actor they would have made it boring. It needed someone who is instinctively funny. He found a way to make boring lines in the show really funny. If I have ever got another really boring part I'd love to give it to Shaun." Knight recognised Micallef's contradictions - the straight, faithful, middle-class man who doesn't drink, smoke or even take coffee, but whose wicked streak emerges in his humour. "Although he's very straight there's something very dark and black there, but it's absolutely not evident in his private life," he laughs. Welcher & Welcher is Micallef's first crack at long-form comedy. Although drawing on conventional narrative tools, it combines elements of sketch, farce and absurdity familiar to fans of his previous work. "I was really surprised because there's a level in it that I didn't expect to be in it, character stuff," Micallef says. "There's a lot of farce in it which I thought, 'Yes that's fine, I'm comfortable with that.' There's a lot of broad slapstick in it and I can see that working. There are jokes. Then there's a gentler aspect to it which took me by surprise a bit, but I thought, 'Oh yes, that works too, that's interesting,' because we haven't done that before." Micallef's character, pompous barrister Quentin Welcher, is an expansion of his spivvy, deadpan sketch-show host, now with a life beyond the studio: "A bit of a dork, not even really with a heart of gold. He's an extremely unlikeable character, which I like." He's married to Kate Welcher (Robyn Butler), with whom he runs the family practice, and has responsibilities to his staff (played by Greenslade, Anita Smith, Santo Cilauro and Nina Liu) and to his eight-year-old son, Winslow, sequestered away in a military academy. The impressive guest line-up includes Sigrid Thornton, playing herself, John Clarke, Max Gillies and Melbourne comedian Tony Martin, in whose forthcoming movie, Bad Eggs, Micallef appears. Gary McAffrie and Michael Ward make cameo appearances in the episodes each co-wrote. The comedy comes largely from his observation of relationships: marital, friendship, employer/employee. How much of Quentin Welcher can be found in his creator? Greenslade: "They are all distressing aspects of his personality that are just exaggerated." Micallef: "Look, to be perfectly honest, I don't think that he has any of the qualities that I don't have. He's pretty much me." Greenslade: "He's not really you." Micallef: "He's sort of me. He's probably a nastier, meaner version of me. If I was well off in the law and a tad more arrogant and a bit dumber maybe and a bit smarter in other things, it could be me. But he's probably also from a born-to-rule background and that's certainly not where I come from at all, so if there's any comment in it on anything that I'm casting it's probably on that sort of mentality." Greenslade plays two roles in the sitcom, one of them a "put-upon nice guy" of ambiguous moniker - Quentin can't remember if it's Peter or Paul and it changes from episode to episode - and the company's major client, Mr Buzzo, a knicker thief with a string of convictions for exposing himself in public. "We fell into certain roles when we were doing university productions and, sensibly, as you get older you can't continue to play those characters because it would be a bit sad," Micallef says. "The characters have matured and they have a dignity about them. My persona has become more and more flawed, and more vulnerable, particularly now that he has a wife and we see him at home. And if there's a line through Peter/Paul character that Francis plays and what he may well have done before, he's got a dignity too about him, a certain pride in him that makes him funny and sad as well. They've mellowed a bit, I guess." Micallef retains creative control as creator, writer, co-producer and star, working closely with director Ted Emery to achieve his vision. He's grateful for the freedom the ABC has allowed. "Everything we want to do we can do, within budgetary parameters. I think if the ABC saw that we'd suddenly turned it into a musical, if suddenly we turned around and were giving them something different, they might say 'What's that?' and we might have to justify it slightly... " When an episode required a VW bug to spin on its roof, a spinning bug was arranged. When another required an irate pelican, the bird and wrangler were found. "Did you know there was only one pelican handler in Victoria?" Murray asks. "It was a nightmare, but it turned out well." The scene being filmed on this sunny afternoon was improvised by Greenslade and Micallef and added to the schedule this morning. "If it works we'll keep it in and it's nice to have that luxury," Micallef says. But while he has relished watching his creation come to life on screen, his future lies behind the camera. Another of his projects, BlackJack, a dramatic telemovie he co-wrote with Michael Ward, will screen on Channel Ten this year. He hopes it is the first in a series. And he has just started work on a live variety show for Nine. "If it was a real mid-life crisis I'd still be a lawyer and regretting that I hadn't made the jump 10 years earlier," he says of his many references to ageing. "I couldn't be happier. But I think I've got a life beyond performing and I'll probably retire behind the camera and direct." In the meantime, next Thursday night he will watch and wait for his mother's call. If it doesn't come, he may well be in trouble. Welcher & Welcher premieres on the ABC on Thursday at 8.30pm.