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GRAHAM KENNEDY
Graham Kennedy, one of Australia’s finest entertainers, has died at 71.
“Being a chum is fun,
That is why I’m one,
Always smiling, always gay,
Chummy at work and chummy at play,
Laugh away your worries,
Don’t be sad and glum,
And eveyone will know that you’re a
Chum, chum, chum”Vale, Graham Kennedy, aka “the King”
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2005 05 25 at 04:57 AM • permalinkI just wish it’d been the geese from ‘The Glasshouse’ that’d died instead.
Posted by Lucky Nutsacks on 2005 05 25 at 05:55 AM • permalinkI’ve been looking for good references on Kennedy on the Web for his genius ... still looking ... but I’ve found two references on his film career ... try IMBd or Graham Kennedy. I must be the youngest old person to mourn his passing.
Oops ... one of the hyperlinks should’ve been Graham Kennedy ... surprise me when I wake up tomorrow morning ... mmm ... and so it goes ...
I remember going to see IMT during the 60’s as a kid. I thought he was perhaps the funniest person I’d ever seen on the telly, but he was even funnier during the commercial breaks. His brilliant performing life masked a private, solitary soul who was never comfortable being the toast of Melbourne. Thanks for all the fun Gra-Gra, and I hope you had fun too.
The exposure being given to Graham Kennedy’s death is a measure of the grip on the print media by the ageing baby boomer generation and evidence that most of their readers come from the same era. Not many Australians under 50 would ever have seen Kennedy perform, so we have to accept the media’s opinion that he was a great entertainer. This is not to denigrate Kennedy, but just to emphasise a generational difference.
In fact, Kennedy was a particularly Melbourne phenomenon, and his appeal was limited mainly to Victorians.
Mr Magoo, wrong in fact. I’m forty and a resident of WA. In remember him well as a favourite when a child, as do my younger siblings. IMT was a national show, at least we got it, and then the Graham Kennedy Show, in WA. Blankety Blanks was national program and also a family favourite. His Nightly National News show in the late 80’s was also national, again a favourite and Australia wide (at least we got it in WA).
Posted by Dean McAskil on 2005 05 25 at 09:25 PM • permalinkLiving national mediocrity David Williamson’s comments on Australia when Kennedy first appeared on television
“At that time suburban Australia was very polite, very controlled, very constricted—probably the most suburban-controlled country on earth,”
were about as predictable as the punchlines in his plays!!
Posted by Consuela Potez on 2005 05 25 at 09:31 PM • permalinkMagoo, you’re wrong. Boomers have had to put up with years of lazy saturation journalism about Big Brother, Princess Di, Australian Idol, Kylie, Paris Hilton and other manufactured no-talents for the consumption of dumbed-down boomers’ kids. We finally get our own milk-it-for-all-it’s-worth celebrity story. The only difference: Kennedy deserves every word of it.
Well, slatts, they should be lots of reminiscing going on in the nursing home then, over the milk arrowroots and hot milk.
“Do you remember Graham when he did his crow impersonations? Laugh? I almost swallowed my dentures… so witty and droll. What? I said SO WITTY, Mabel.. you silly old dingbat. Where’s my walking frame?”Leave the comedy to people who are funny, Mr Magoo.
Kennedy was a unique entertainer who held in thrall a couple of generations of television viewers.
Furthermore, if you didn’t see Graham Kennedy, why diss him? Why not go and do something to amuse yourself, like play in the sand? Especially as it appears you still need to learn to spell.
*
For the attention of more intelligent commenters, Graham Kennedy was a renegade who famously, and publicly, humiliated Australia’s stupidest Trades Union - Actors Equity - when he said, after appearing in an Equity-disapproved cigarette commercial: ‘I’ll puff away all day if I want to, and if I have to leave Actors Equity, I will!’
Vale.
And RIP.
I’m sad to say I’ve never heard of Graham Kennedy before today. I wished I had. He sounds like a very talented man.
It’s interesting to me how certain older individuals act or perform in Australia, Great Britain, or elsewhere and seldom come to the attention of Americans. And then all of a sudden they will appear in a movie or TV series and Americans will remark how talented they are as if they are new. The gentleman who plays the Minister of Magic in the Harry Potter movies is an example. A fine actor who I understand played on the British soap Coronation Street (which I hadn’t heard of until last year), he seldom played in anything international (that I know of) before HP.
I do wish more Australian and British icons would come to the attention of Americans. We would likely treasure them as much as you do.
Posted by wronwright on 2005 05 26 at 09:15 AM • permalinkIt’s a fluke. We all know the vast majority including Graham Norton is entirely hetereosexual.
Posted by wronwright on 2005 05 26 at 08:28 PM • permalink
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