Quantock Nation
Originally published in Tabula Rasa – the Swinburne Student magazine Apr 2002
Rod Quantock found time in the middle of the Melbourne International Comedy festival to talk to Ian Bennington about his career and refugees.
When I phoned Rod Quantock for this interview he was running a bit overtime on something. He asked me to call him back in 5 minutes, so I had time to think about Rod’s 30+ year career in comedy.
Most of the nation became aware of Rod on the ABC series Australia – You’re Standing In It (1985). This was quite revolutionary humour that ridiculed much of contemporary Australia culture and gave us cultural icons Tim & Debbie (“yeah, I know”), the Dodgy Bros. and Rods quiet rants segments. Rods appearances were normally limited to monologues on the state of things. These were usually done with a map and often in a classroom full of stuffed toys, but he did venture out to vex the citizens now and then. It was actually similar to what he is doing now but without the latecomers (“Liberal, Labor and Latecomers the axis of evil“). Later came the legendary bus tours around Melbourne. Rod led groups of people through the streets, restaurants and homes of the town – surprising some and amusing many – all the time establishing his icon of a rubber chicken on the end of a pointing stick.
Every year at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival you can bet that Rod will have a near sold out season at the Town Hall (or close by). For those who are unfamiliar with his style it is informative, educational and politically defiantly left of center. He takes the issues that the environmentalists and humanitarian organizations get upset about and breaks it down into easier consume pieces. From there he shows that, like everything in life, from the right perspective you can see the funny side.
For the eleven months around the April comedy festival Rod stays a busy man. He can be found chairing debates, doing television guest spots, appearing at rallies and doing corporate shows for the likes of Energy Victoria, Ford Australia and National Mutual. He isn’t very comfortable with the word corporate though. “Corporate I suppose is the overarching word for it all, but it covers a fair range of work for community groups, government groups and education things. It’s a mixed bag of things, but the corporate sector certainly raises its ugly head in the middle of all that.“Rod does take an interest in who his clients are though. ”There are some companies that I won’t work for, but if you were really strict about it you couldn’t work at all. It can become a very convoluted argument but those companies that are directly involved in things like child labor in Thailand I would refuse (to work for). Although I did do a thing for Western Mining last year. Initially I said no, but after some discussion with them it turned out this was a four day seminar involving a wide range of people and they wanted me to give an anti-globalization talk to them. That was very interesting. I’ve turned down forestry companies, wood chippers and paper manufacturers. I think that 99% of the corporate sector have no idea what I do at the comedy festival, or at Trades Hall or on the back of trucks at rallies and things.”
Though most people will have heard his name, a lot of people don’t seem to know him from Michael Moore or the late Bill Hicks. He may be a regular in the pages of Green Left Weekly but the people that really should hear what he jokes about are the people that read the Financial Review and the Australian. Even The Age, which is a major sponsor of the comedy festival, don’t cover it as much the Herald Sun. When they do write reviews Rod describes it as less important to the Arts editors as the latest Shakespeare production or Hollywood blockbuster. ”It’s very hard to get reviewed and it is nice when it happens. With my career I get an audience just by turning up, but certainly younger comics do hang out for a review and it is very hard on them“.
Despite the restrictions of a comedy show Rod has no plans on expanding his arena. ”I just do what comes along, I don’t have a five year plan. I really don’t think much beyond tomorrow in terms of what I’m going to do. I know I should get better at that because you have to book things well in advance these days. But I’m much more interested in what I say than how I say it or where I say it. My interests lie in expanding the horizons of the subject matter I deal with.
“Nobody would have me in television. Television is not the least bit interested in what I do. Even the ABC would not contemplate having someone of my age on (or they) wouldn’t be interested in being as provocative as I like to be.
“No, it (becomes) not enjoyable and (is) a bit like writing a Mills & Boon novel. It seems easy when you read it, but if it’s not in your nature to write that sort of stuff – and that is not to demean or belittle it in any way I couldn’t write the Q series and I couldn’t write Monty Python and I certainly couldn’t write channel 10 sketch comedy.” I don’t know if Rods last comments was a referent to Ratbags, a series that Rod was involved for network 10.
Through the late 1980’s and into the early 1990’s Rod wrote a column for the Sunday Age called Wireless. A selection of these columns was published by Lothian in 1999. Since then he has filled in for Red Symons in the Age but he has no plans to delve any further into the written word. “That’s it – you’ve had all the books you’re ever going to get. No it’s not worth the effort. It’s a financial thing but more importantly it’s a discipline thing. I just don’t have the discipline to sit down and write the thing and equally I don’t have the time.”
There are pictures of Rod from years gone by, clowning around with Spike Milligan. As to how Spike’s death affected him, “It’s very sad that he died, but he lasted a lot longer than I ever though he would. In terms of him dying, it is a bit like the Queen Mother, you can’t get too upset about someone 101 years dying. I think the effect of it is that you cast your mind back over his career and the legacy of all of it and you are just grateful that he lived as long as he did. It was a very sad day in lots of ways, but it was also a great opportunity for ABC radio to play some Goons and bits and pieces of him so we could have a bit of a celebration. That was a bit of a bonus, he should die more often“. Which is just the sort of thing Spike would have said.
“Somebody asked me what influence Spike had on me and the answer is really none. There is nothing that you can take from Spike because it is his. You can’t possibly recreate that mind. I think he freed up comedy immensely, but that was for the generation before me. That was for the Peter Cook’s and Dudley Moore’s. Monty Python particularly owe him a great debt.”
It is no surprise that any recent conversation with Rod would turn to the issue of the refugees being held in detention camps around Australia. At this years show in the comedy festival – Scum Nation he was wearing a Free The Refugees badge and handing out fliers at the end of the show for a rally at Maribyrnong Detention Centre that was held in early April. After chairing the annual Writers Soapbox (held across the road from the Hawthorn campus at the Town Hall) he collected money for some bunny rabbitsthat had escaped from where they were being held and were possibly wandering in the desert now. That night he collected over $400 from the people of Boroondara. “There is no point attacking peoplesprejudices because that is going to upset them as well. What anybody can do is move very slowly to change peoplesperceptions. It is very easy to demonize the refugees, as has been done. Now we have created an atmosphere of fear and loathing it will take years to turn that around, yet it only took a month or two to create.”
What keeps him going? Coffee may play a part in it. “I’m an instant coffee drinker. I don’t like real coffee, it tastes horrible. Unfortunately, the coffee I like most is made by Nestle, so I can’t have that. I have to drink a slightly inferior coffee that is free of the taint of multinational exploitation of the third world. This brand has a bitter taste to it which reminds me everyday that I’m making a stand.”
Rod is humble about his way of taking the issues of the news and turning them into humour. “That’s my job. You wouldn’t come and worry and watch me not be funny. I can’t explain it to you, but it is just what I do. My job is to be as accurate as I can (be). There is no point taking a stand that is just based in a falsehood. I have to sort all those things out and find what is funny.” Which raises the question is there anything that isn’t funny, “It’s not that, there are times and circumstances that make people not find them funny. If you start making jokes about people in wheelchairs then there is the chance that your audience will automatically say ‘you’re not allowed to make jokes about people in wheelchairs’. The people in wheelchairs think it is fantastic because they are excluded from not only many buildings and activities, but they are excluded from comedy as well. So they love it, but people on their behalf are quite offended by it.”
Many of his show’s are semi-educational (don’t get scared, there won’t be a test). Rod takes the news that we get each day and puts it through the Quantock brain and ends up with the same information with a left interpretation presented as easy-to-digest jokes. I asked him if he thought what he was doing was educational. ”No, no, people are already educated before they come (to see the shows). Nobody learns anything that they didn’t already know. All they learn is that for an hour or so we can all have a good laugh together and realize that they are not the only ones who disagree with what is going on. It is morale boosting more than educating. I just reinforce people’s existing beliefs about John Howard, and give them comfort to know that there is another couple of hundred people in the room who agree with them. That’s comforting.”
To find out more about how to help with one of Rod’s current concerns – contact the Refugee Action Collective on the web at www.rac-vic.org or phone 0438 399 973 or email
refugeeaction@mail.com
Three things Rod would do if he was Prime Minister:
- Appoint Robin Hood as head of the Tax department,
- I’d build a bridge from the refugee camps of Indonesia across to Western
Australia so that people could walk, - Anyone who gets into politics, when they retire they have to go to a
monastery wearing sackcloth and ashes and giving their life to spiritual
contemplation. Thatll weed out a few of the creeps I reckon.