The Gillies Report

Cast

The series starred Max Gillies, with a supporting cast that included John Clarke, Wendy Harmer, Phillip Scott, Tracy Harvey, Patrick Cook, Marcus Eyre, Geoff Kelso and Peter Moon. The on-screen troupe combined a wide range of skills, honed in many areas of arts and entertainment:

Impact and significance

The Gillies Report marked a notable revival of the weekly topical satire sketch format, a genre that had rarely been attempted on Australian TV since the demise of Australia's first and best-known series in this field, The Mavis Bramston Show, in the 1960s. TGR spawned a number of successful sequels including The Gillies Republic (1986), The Dingo Principle (1987), Gillies and Company (1992). Its success also paved the way for other subsequent topical satire series, including BackBerner (1999-2002), the various incarnations of The Chaser (2001–present), and Shaun Micallef's Newstopia (2007-2008) and Mad As Hell (2012–present), and on radio How Green was my Cactus (1986–present).

The Gillies Report also established or greatly furthered the screen careers of many of the cast, including Gillies, Harmer, Kelso, Clarke, and Harvey. John Clarke - whose regular reports on the fictional Australian sport of "Farnarkling" were another popular segment - carried on the Gillies Report tradition with the successful mockumentary series The Games (1998-2000), and continues it to the present with Clarke & Dawe, the long-running weekly satirical political commentary he writes and performs with Bryan Dawe on ABC-TV.

The central feature of the series was Gillies' uncanny ability to perform scathingly accurate satirical impersonations of a wide range of public, media and political figures. These included Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, B.A. Santamaria, Don Chipp, Andrew Peacock, Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen, morbidly obese Queensland politician Russ Hinze (whom Gillies portrayed in a costume fashioned from a beanbag chair), brewing magnate and conservative political figure John Elliott - whose regular exclamation "Pig's arse!" became a popular catchphrase - and especially for his famous impression of Bob Hawke, Australia's Prime Minister at the time - although Hawke was reported to have been irked by Gillies' portrayal, and made disparaging remarks about it to him when they met, even though Hawke claimed he had never seen the show.

The Gillies Report was followed by sequels The Gillies Republic (1986) and Gillies and Company (1992). Cook, Scott and Kelso would go on to make a similar program for the ABC called The Dingo Principle (1987). Harmer went on to host the landmark ABC-TV live sketch comedy series The Big Gig, and Peter Moon became a leading cast member of the popular and long-running TV sketch comedy series Fast Forward.

The "Goanna" Sketch

One of the series' most celebrated sketches was its famous send-up of media magnate Kerry Packer, who was reported to have been "furious" about it. At the time, Packer was in the news because he had been investigated by the Costigan Commission for his suspected involvement in organised crime, drug dealing and tax evasion rackets, and the claims caused a sensation in the Australian media. Packer, who was codenamed "Squirrel" in the Commission's evidence, could only be referred in the media to by the nickname "Goanna" (coined by The National Times), due to Australia's draconian libel and defamation laws. This led to a number of satires on the matter, including the Gilllies Report sketch, and a satirical T-shirt marketed by the Queensland-based independent satirical magazine Cane Toad Times, which conflated the Costigan allegations with the Lacoste shirt brand, renaming the brand as "Lacostigan" and replacing Lacoste's familiar alligator emblem with a goanna, in reference to Packer.

The Gillies Report sketch (available on YouTube) also parodied Packer's own recent self-serving appearance to defend himself on his own network's current affairs show, which was in itself a highly unusual move for the notoriously media-wary millionaire. It opened with Patrick Cook, in barrister's garb, putting questions to 'Packer' (Gillies), about the allegations. He at first responds amiably, but gradually becomes enraged by the interrogation, and the hostile reaction of the audience, and finally smashes up his desk, revealing that he has a long lizard-like tail. As the cast perform a satirical quasi-operatic song about the case, Packer - now transformed into "The Goanna" - is pursued through the TV station by the mob, but (parodying King Kong) he escapes by scaling the transmitter tower of Packer's Sydney TV station TCN-9 where, now grown to gigantic size, he catches and crushes a news helicopter from a rival network. The desk-smashing also lampooned Packer's famously volcanic temper, and referenced a well-known rumour of the time, which claimed that Packer once smashed up his own office in a fit of rage during one of his many attempts to quit smoking.

Awards

At the 28th Annual TV Week Logie Awards held in 1986, The Gillies Report won the Logie for the "Best Light Entertainment Series".