Good one-liners seldom work in print. But they make a good night of theatre. There were dozens last night as Paul Lyneham, Bronwyn Bishop and Andrew Denton argued the uses of the Royal Family and Malcolm Turnbull, Wendy Harmer and Graham Richardson argued for the Republic.
Denton stole the show. But the audience let him down, as he knew it would, come time to vote at the end. He said they would vote for the republic because it was trendy.
But trendy things go out of vogue and untrendy things become trendy.
“”Why not be trendy before your time?” he argued. But when moderator Campbell McComas asked those in favour of Denton’s team to sing the first line of God Save Our Queen, Denton was sunk.
His argument was by far the best. He urged that far from becoming a Republic, Australia should set up Windsorland and invite all the royal families to live here in order to pay back our (by 2000) $400 billion foreign debt.
It was not about politics, but business, he argued.
The Royals could move into 42A Ramsay Street, with the Queen Mum in an A. V. Jennings retirement home.
The event was created for television. Only Denton acted. He hammed it up at the end, breaking down in mock weeping.
Malcolm Turnbull could not quite stop taking himself seriously, and even said so. He could not shake of his passionate and sincere belief in the republican cause to surrender his words totally to humour and the bizarre. Though, he like all, had some good one-liners. In response to Denton’s Royal-family-as-a-business plan, he said they were no good at business.
“”They set fire to Windsor Castle, and it wasn’t even insured. It’s un Australian!”
And later appealing for an Australian Head of State: “”We’ve got plenty of racing enthusiasts who don’t pay tax.”
The show is to be televised in June or July. The date is yet to be fixed. Mc Comas wondered how much would end on the cutting room floor after the ABC’s lawyers had been through it.
Mc Comas himself, playing himself (as Richo so thoughtfully put it), was wicked. Introducing Turnbull as “”Sydney Grammar, Oxford, merchant banker (I think there’s a misspelling there)”.
The poor old Royals were such an easy target, perhaps too easy. Bronwyn fell flat on the now very stale joke about Hawke asking the Queen to make Australia a kingdom with him as king. There’s only one thing worse than an old joke _ an old, ugly one.
Harmer rattled off a delicious history of the English monarchy, George III spoke to trees, she said, and after getting some particularly bad advice from a stand of elms, he lost America. She told of beheadings and drownings and the like, condemning the present lot as dull by comparison.
But the show wasn’t dull by any means. Don’t miss it on the box.