In his later and most famous incarnation, Gunston had evolved to become the unlikely host of his own national TV variety show,
The Norman Gunston Show, which premiered with a live broadcast on
ABC television on 18 May 1975. Dubbed "the little Aussie bleeder" (a play on the term "
Aussie battler"), he satirised parochial Australian culture, media "personalities" and egocentric
talk show hosts. After a faltering start, the
Norman Gunston Show rapidly gained a huge national audience and the series became the pre-eminent Australian TV comedy program of its day, with McDonald winning a
Gold Logie and having several pop hits. He is, notably, the only Logie recipient who has received the award in the name of his character rather than in his own name. The series producer director was John Eastway.
Format The Gunston show was a subversive parody of the established variety "Tonight Show" format, centring on a weekly roster of celebrity guests who were 'interviewed' by Norman. Genuine musical performances by guest stars were countered by Norman's own unique interpretations of popular songs – he specialised in portraying his lyrics through mime and sign language and frequently punctuated the song with 'dramatic' interjections. Among his memorable performances were his histrionic rendition of the
Tom Jones hit "
Delilah", his
charades-like version of "
Send in the Clowns" and his heroic interpretation of the
Liza Minnelli's theme-song "
Liza with a Z", which Norman back-announced by guilelessly expressing surprise at the fact that few singers except "Miss Lisa Minnulli" had ever attempted the song. McDonald is in real life an accomplished blues harmonica player (he jammed with
Frank Zappa in an interview recording during Zappa's second Australian tour) and many of Norman's musical performances were regularly punctuated by poorly executed and inappropriate
harmonica playing, such as in his rendition of the
Billy Joel signature tune "
Piano Man". Norman's distinctive interview "shtick" included several recurring features. He habitually presented himself as ill-prepared and under-researched, seeming largely ignorant of and/or uninterested in his guests' achievements, although he was always quick to exploit any chance that their celebrity status might enable him to achieve one of his ambitions, such as being chosen to star in a cigarette ad (which he eventually achieved with 'Dukes' Cigarettes), or winning a
Gold Logie. Norman would further undercut his guests' star status by linking any aspect of their lives and careers to the most mundane features of his own life; he also habitually employed
malapropisms and made a particular feature of mis-pronouncing stars' names, or apparently mistaking them for someone else. In his debut show he repeatedly referred to wealthy Sydney socialite
Lady Fairfax as "Mrs Lady Fairfax" and in a later show he introduced progressive union leader
Jack Mundey as "Mister Jack Mondaay" – a satirical inversion of the Australian habit of pronouncing the
morphograph '-day' as '-dee' in the days of the week (e.g. "Sat'dee" for "Saturday"). As the series developed McDonald and his team introduced additional live and pre-taped segments including: • "Norman's Dreamtime" – a mock-fairytale segment in which Gunston regaled a group of increasingly bored children with readings from a book of iconic Australian fables, with titles such as "Why Underpants Ride Up" • "Consumer Straight Talk" – helpful tips on alternative uses for everyday household items, which later evolved into the even more grandiose-sounding "Spaceship Southern Hemisphere" • a weekly review of the show's ratings over previous weeks, with suggestions on how viewers and the studio audience might help them skyrocket; later in Series 1 this focused on Norman's increasingly desperate campaign to win the coveted
Gold Logie – which is, ironically, exactly what transpired at the 1976 Logies. • in Series 2 Gunston presented (but did not appear in) a 3-minute satirical 'micro-soap' called
Checkout Chicks, which parodied current Australian TV soap operas and starred actresses well known for their appearances in such programs, including
Number 96 stars
Abigail and
Philippa Baker,
Class of 74 star
Anne Louise Lambert, who went on to star in
Picnic at Hanging Rock (in which McDonald also appeared in a 'straight' role). Stage settings were defiantly downmarket and rooted in Australian suburbia and kitsch RSL club stylings – after being introduced, bemused guests were offered their choice of dubious delicacies (such as
pineapple doughnuts or the infamous
Chiko Roll) from Norman's hot food bar, before being invited to sit on his vinyl-clad "night-and-day" (an Australian term for
sofa bed). Perhaps the most memorable example of this was his interview of Edward Woodward and Michele Dotrice, during which he performed his version of
Othello 'for the rugby leagues clubs', which involved him squirting tomato sauce over a ventriloquists's dummy, reducing Woodward to helpless laughter. Gunston's personal appearance satirised club performers and TV interviewers of the time – for the studio segments he wore an ill-fitting blue lurex tuxedo jacket (wrongly buttoned) and the fly on his (too short) trousers was habitually left undone, with the shirt-tail poking out through the zip. Gunston also adopted a deliberately bad
comb over hairstyle to partially cover his balding head. One of his visual trademarks was the small pieces of tissue paper applied to his pasty white face to cover supposed shaving cuts. This
comic device led to his memorable exchange with visiting American actress
Sally Struthers – noting Norman's apparent shaving cuts, she kindly suggested that perhaps Gunston should use an electric razor; the nonplussed Norman replied "Uh, I do", at which point Struthers collapsed in a fit of laughter. Gunston performed subversive TV interviews with many major celebrities – during a
Wings press conference he quipped to
Linda McCartney: 'That's funny, you don't look Japanese.' (referencing
Yoko Ono); other famous victims included
Mick Jagger,
Warren Beatty,
Charlton Heston, and
Muhammad Ali. Perhaps Norman's most well known interview was with
Keith Moon at Charlton stadium in 1976. Moon famously ended his brief encounter with Norman by tipping Vodka over his head and yelling "Piss off, you Australian slag". McDonald was one of the pioneers of the satirical "ambush" interview technique, which was founded on his considerable improvisational acting skills and precise comic timing. The "Gunston Method" relied on the fact that, especially in the early days of the series, the Norman persona was still relatively unknown in his home country, and completely unknown outside Australia. Thus, he was successfully able to hide behind the guise of a fully rounded and highly plausible character who
appears to be stupid in order to throw his otherwise media-savvy quarry off their guard. This caused various results, from hilarity (
Sally Struthers and
Cheech and Chong), to clever play-alongs like Muhammad Ali ("I'm punchy – what's your excuse?") to bewilderment (
Warren Beatty), to complete outrage (
Rudolf Nureyev,
Michael Cole). The Gunston technique has since been employed by many comedians. In both style and appearance,
Paul Kaye's character
Dennis Pennis was strongly reminiscent of Gunston. It later had a very successful revival thanks to the British satirist
Sacha Baron Cohen through his characters
Ali G,
Borat and
Brüno. Canadian comedian and actor
Martin Short also employed a similar technique with his best-known character, the fawning, morbidly obese celebrity interviewer
Jiminy Glick; another notable resemblance between Glick and Norman is the Glick show's "fairytale" segment "Lalawood Fables", which is very similar to the "Norman's Dreamtime" segments of the Gunston show, in which the host reads a satirical mock-fable (intercut with pre-produced vision) to a group of assembled children. The Australian satirical comedy team
The Chaser have also frequently used the Gunston Method to ambush unwitting targets—examples include the
Julian Morrow character the "Citizens' Infringment Officer", and the team's now-legendary stunt in which they managed to penetrate a tight security cordon around the
APEC Forum, despite the fact that
Chas Licciardello was masquerading as
Osama bin Laden. Gunston was immortalised in Australian political history when, on the morning of 11 November 1975, McDonald and his film crew found out that the
Labor government led by
Gough Whitlam had just been dismissed by the
Governor-General Sir John Kerr. On hearing the news, McDonald and his crew raced from Sydney to
Parliament House in
Canberra, where they were able to film McDonald (as Gunston) briefly addressing the assembled crowd, only moments before Whitlam and the Governor-General's Official Secretary
David Smith appeared for the reading of the now-famous proclamation announcing Whitlam's dismissal. In 1976, the ABC aired a third season of
The Norman Gunston Show. By this stage, increased production budgets afforded Gunston more opportunities for overseas interviews, including
Malcolm Muggeridge,
Michael Caine,
John Sturges,
Glenda Jackson,
John Stonehouse, and
Rudolph Nureyev. One memorable encounter with
Frank Zappa ended with Zappa and Norman duetting respectively on guitar and harmonica in a spontaneous blues jam (McDonald is in fact a proficient harmonica player). As the jam concluded, McDonald threw in a witty musical quote from the well-known
ABC news theme, a nod to Zappa's well-known proclivity for inserting musical quotes such as TV themes into his work. In November 1976, a specially prepared 45-minute UK Gunston TV special was screened on
BBC2 TV. Some of Gunston's guests on the show included
Diana Dors and
Tony Greig. After the third and final ABC TV season finished in late 1976, Gunston was popular enough to approach commercial TV networks. In particular, the
Seven Network showed interest in producing another
Norman Gunston series. Because of McDonald's other commitments, the series did not commence production until early 1978. Between July–September 1977, Norman Gunston was included in the 8-episode ABC TV series,
The Garry McDonald Show. Other characters were also played by McDonald, including
Harry Butler, and
Mo McCackie. ==Channel Seven years==