Interview by Jayne Lewis

It's a few minutes past twelve on a Wednesday afternoon and I'm apologising profusely to the affable Shaun Micallef for standing him up earlier in the morning. He good-naturedly brushes aside my prostrations, saying that he himself leaves emails sitting in his inbox for months, which is a terrible habit because he would would never leave a piece of correspondance lying on a desk for months; I am easily forgiven for not checking my email the previous day.

To explain to the reader: an hour and fifteen minutes earlier I was at home when the phone rang - it was the ABC wondering if I had trouble getting through to Melbourne. I said, "You changed the interview time, didn't you?" They they, "You didn't check your email, did you?" Two minutes of a mutual barrage of 'sorry's latter, I had an hour and ten minutes to read the publicity material, write interview questions, rustle up a dictaphone, and get into the On Dit office for an interstate phone call.

Unfortunately the Great Dictaphone Hunt was unsuccessful - turning up only a broken walkman - so I request that Micallef speak slowly if he is going to say anything interesting. He comments that the On Dit resources have improved in recent years; when he himself ran for editor (around 1980/81 when education was free, the government gave you a study allowance of around $50/week, and disco was well into its decline) they would have been grateful to have had a broken walkman. All they had was a pencil, a scrap of paper, and a head full of story ideas; a broken dictaphone is a big step up indeed. Micallef asks me if On Dit is still a quality newspaper and I am unsure of how to answer. If quality is articles on ex-Adelaide-law-students-turned-genius-comedians, well, quality we are I suppose.

In the same year he ran for On Dit, Micallef and friends also ran, he believes, for SAUA El Presidente, and a whole bunch of other stuff. He ended up only on SAUS Council, but remembers with fondness those crazy campaign days. Micallef also did a little bit of stuff for 5UV, and plenty of good old fashioned Uni theatre - something which, unfortunately, seems to have lost a strong focus on campus, a side-product of no longer having a Performing Arts department, strangely enough.

Those experiences formed Micallef's most fond university memories and were, for him, the entire point of going to university. Bugger the law degree.

Micallef's worst experience at Uni involved the UniBar, copious amounts of beer, and a young INXS - that, he says, is a measure of how long ago he attended our fine institution.

It was his eighteenth birthday and the very first time he had drunk alcohol. Following that, he says quite frankly, he drunk far too much, far too regularly. The time spent in the bar probably did very little to prepart him for that other Bar, as in lawyering. As I said, bugger the law degree. But still, he figures INXS can't have been permanently damaged by the shoddy behaviour of the young, drunken Shaun Micallef, because they later went on to international fame, fortune, and in one case, an embarrasing drug-related death.

Micallef's advice for you freshers out there getting the hang of things over this week is to get out there and join as many clubs as you can. You don't have to actually go to meetings, but by all means, join. There is more on offer at University, he says, than your degrees. He also advises that law students don't bother going to tutes. I remind Micallef that his early Eighty experience may not be valid to the '01 Law student, so follow that particular piece of advice at your own peril; I don't know whether or not you can get away with that kind of behavior anymore - ask a current law student.

Following the two successful series on the ABC - The Micallef Program and The Micallef Programme - Shaun Micallef is back with a third series, The Micallef Pogram (no this is not a typo). He changed the name of each series because he wanted a completely different show, but the ABC wanted a new series of the old one - the compromise was to change the name. Also, he says, he and his friends thought it was funny. And they wanted to confuse people. Unfortunately the automatic spell-checkers used by a number of publications changed 'Pogram' to 'Pogrom'. Hmmmm... 25 minutes of ethnic cleansing each week on Your ABC? Probably not a good idea and, says Micallef, a far darker humour than even he was wanting.

And this, kiddies, is why you should never just trust your spell-checker.

Micallef has, I think, a very 'bastard' sense of humour. He attributes this to being, well, a bastard. And to ten years of being a lawyer and somewhat (but not much) of a bully. Other lawyers, he says, are far worse. He, at least, tries to be a nice guy. I must say that he really is a more-than-affable chappie, though, and nothing like the arrogant bully-boy he portrays on the teeve. He takes care to note that, although his character is a bully, he rarely wins, so there's a moral lesson there for everyone to take home and show their parents. His 'character' also looks like a solicitor who is uncomfortable on the teeve, and in that sense, he says, reflects how he himself sometimes feels - like he doesn't belong on camera.

The upshot of insurance lawyering in Adelaide for ten years before finally pursuing a career in comedy, says Micallef, is that he has been well-trained and is extremely disciplined in writing. He structures his sketches, he says, the way a lawyer would structure something. One can certainly see this strict ordering in his sketches - before they go crazy, at which point someone is almost certainly bound to get hurt. Chat show parody one moment, slapstick the next, and often the two combined; you never know what to expect from Shaun Micallef and that's why I really quite like him.

Micallef says he learned a lot from working on Channel 7's Full Frontal - namely, how to put together a television show. His own show is constructed on the basis of that experience because, much to his chagrin, there is really nowhere in Australia where a young whipper snapper such as himself can learn how to put together a comedy program, er.. programme.. er, pogram. The closest thing he could find was the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, but, as he didn't actually pass the audition, it was a little hard to learn from them.

The best thing about Full Frontal, according to Micallef, is that there was much less pressure if he fucked up. Being just one member of an ensemble cast, no-one really notices. The down side, especially when writing for other programmes, is that to a certain extent you lose your own voice. When people are paying you to write, they are paying you for your best ideas - Micallef acknowledges that this restricts, to a certain extent, what you can later use for yourself. He admits that sometimes he has been slightly resentful of handing over ideas, but also says that he has written stuff - good stuff - that he would never have done for himself because he wrote it with other comedians' styles and mannerisms in mind.

The Micallef Pogram screens weekly on the ABC, at 8pm., from Monday February 19. It is particularly relevant to Adelaide audiences, says Micallef, because it has ".. a distinctly Adelaide flavour.." and an Adelaide University sense of humour (circa 1980) because the Pogram utilises a lot of material, and people, from Micallef's Uni theatre group days. Ah.. these undergrad friends we make for life..

Good news also is that Micallef is hoping to do a standup tour later in the year, and is anxious to perform in the Adelaide Uni environs he once held (and still, from what I can tell does hold) dear. The only reason he left, he says, is that Adelaide doesn't have a bloody television industry - he had to go to Melbourne to produce a comedy television show.