The Big Issue Australia #662 - Molly Meldrum by The Big Issue Australia

Ed.

662 27 MAY 2022

BLONDIE

xx.

‘It’s okay

different’ to be

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Contents

EDITION

662 16 Hanging on the…Zoom Call Blondie get together with The Smiths’ Johnny Marr – and with The Big Issue – for a bit of a chinwag about pretty much everything.

20 The Real Jurassic Park

12.

“I Was Not Destined for a Career in Finance” Music industry veteran Molly Meldrum reflects on a childhood in the Mallee, his unlikely TV career – and the words of advice from his grandmother that he’s never forgotten. cover photo by James Geer/Headpress contents photo by Allen & Unwin

THE REGULARS

04 05 06 08 11 22

Ed’s Letter & Your Say Meet Your Vendor Streetsheet Hearsay & 20 Questions My Word The Big Picture

29 36 37 38 39 41

Ricky Film Reviews Small Screen Reviews Music Reviews Book Reviews Public Service Announcement

42 44 45 46

Tastes Like Home Puzzles Crossword Click

In Siberia, the permafrost is thawing. So scientists have established Pleistocene Park – an ecosystem populated by camels, bison and, well… mammoths – to quell global warming.

30 MUSIC

Space Is the Place As Spiritualized release their ninth studio album, frontman Jason Pierce, aka J Spaceman, offers a memorable description of their music: “Free jazz against silent space”.

Ed’s Letter

by Amy Hetherington Editor @amyhetherington

Good Golly Saint Molly

here is a word for we St Kilda fans: long‑suffering. As our cover star and die‑hard Saints man Molly Meldrum counsels in his Letter to My Younger Self: “be prepared for a lifetime of heartache and misery”. For a footy club founded in 1873, we’ve won just the one premiership flag. One – by just one point, back in 1966. Though we hold the record for wooden spoons: 27. In my lifetime, we’ve played in three grand finals. In 1997, I listened to the call while driving around the rolling countryside of northern NSW, too nervous to stay still, as we lost to Adelaide. In 2009, I wept in the beer garden of a Sydney pub as Geelong got up by 12 points. The next year, the infamous draw with Collingwood, I lost my voice cheering as the game played out on a big screen in Santorini, where I was on holiday with my youngest sister

LETTER OF THE FORTNIGHT

– a London-based Magpies supporter. By the replay the following weekend we were in Italy, and perhaps mercifully, I missed the shellacking, instead getting updates on my phone from back home. The pain is still real. But so is the hope, especially as we’re sitting pretty this season. That’s why I love Molly’s confession in this edition that he fainted before the final siren on that momentous day in 1966. He is a true fan. Of the Saints. Of the NRL’s Melbourne Storm. Of music. It’s there in the way he was kicked out of the Beatles’ Festival Hall show in Melbourne in 1964, so overcome with hysteria was he. It’s there in the way he introduced many of us to music on Countdown, and later Hey Hey, championing acts such as ABBA, Blondie, Madonna and countless local bands. It’s there in the way he is unabashedly himself, Stetson and all. As he says in this edition: “We can all find our place in the world.”

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The Big Issue Story The Big Issue is an independent, not-for-profit magazine sold on the streets around Australia. It was created as a social enterprise 25 years ago to provide both a voice and a work opportunity for people experiencing homelessness and disadvantage. Your purchase of this magazine has directly benefited the person who sold it to you. Big Issue vendors buy each copy for $4.50 and sell it to you for $9, keeping the profits. But The Big Issue is more than a magazine.

Your Say

Hi there, love your mag, have been reading it for years but it’s the first time I just had to write to you, because not one, but two of your stories in Ed#659 really hit home. ‘Slow Life’ by Sami Shah and Lorin Clarke’s ‘Moon With a View’ both extol the virtues of not rushing through life. So true. I was recently forced by circumstances to semi-retire. Now I realise it was a blessing in disguise. But first, I had to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Today, as I walk my housemate’s dog, pat the cat, sit in the sun, beach walk, or read the paper at the cafe, I have become very conscious of others racing through life from one thing to the next – totally unaware that their frantic pace is mainly self-imposed. I’m not sure where I will be living in a year or what exactly this new stage of my life will be like, but one thing I do know is that getting off that hamster wheel was exactly what I needed. Thanks for your mag. KAREN ZASKOLNY BRIGHTON I SA

• Our Women’s Subscription Enterprise provides employment and training for women through the sale of magazine subscriptions as well as social procurement work. • The Community Street Soccer Program promotes social inclusion and good health at weekly soccer games at 23 locations around the country. • The Vendor Support Fund will offset the cost price of products for vendors, allowing them to earn a larger margin on their own street sales. • The Big Issue Education workshops provide school, tertiary and corporate groups with insights into homelessness and disadvantage, and provide work opportunities for people experiencing marginalisation. CHECK OUT ALL THE DETAILS AT THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

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YOUR SAY SUBMISSIONS MAY BE EDITED FOR CLARITY AND SPACE.

Meet Your Vendor

interview by Melissa Fulton photo by Michael Quelch

PROUD UNIFORM PARTNER OF THE BIG ISSUE VENDORS.

27 MAY 2022

SELLS THE BIG ISSUE IN CONCORD, SYDNEY

Marcus

I’ve been selling the magazine for 25 years, and in September I’ll be celebrating 11 years of selling in Concord. I’m really proud to see the evolution of the magazine, and my evolution as a person too. The thing that’s been the hardest is my mum passed away four years ago. Mum had me when she was 22. And because of my cleft palate, she had to really focus on me and my operations and stuff like that. When Mum and Dad divorced, Mum raised myself and my sister on the parenting pension – that’s hard going. That’s probably where I learned a lot of my lessons in life, particularly my budgeting skills. Because whilst we never had a great deal of money, things always got paid, and we always had food. School was hard for me. Mum always used to say “Just do the best you can. Failure is a part of life; don’t be scared to fail. So long as you’ve had a crack.” Because of the support of my friends and teachers I was able to finish Year 12. I love my pitch in Concord. It’s a little village, a busy little strip. And my customers, they’re like family now. Even people who don’t buy from me, they stop and say g’day. I get lots of puppy dog pats too. I can’t have a dog in the boarding house where I live, so it’s good to get some therapy while I’m working. Selling The Big Issue and being a Classroom speaker has given me a reason to get out of bed in the morning. It’s given me a routine and structure. It’s one of my coping mechanisms for my bipolar as well. I’ve been doing the Classroom for 11 years now, and even though it can be a bit tough sometimes, I’m at that age where I do feel comfortable talking about it. My attitude has always been if I get through to one kid then that’s been worth the effort, you know? One of my customers said to me once that I should write a Letter to My Younger Self. And I said, with all the greatest respect, if I did that, I’d have to dig up some stuff that I don’t really want to recall. I always joke with people that hell doesn’t scare me, because I’ve already been there and I got kicked out. I love my motorsport. I’m a volunteer marshal, have been since I was 14. Motorsport’s been a lifelong thing because my dad raced speedway when I was a baby. And when he was marshalling at the tracks, I was always there. The Big Issue journey has been half my life. I still love doing it. It’s the best job I’ve ever had and it’s the hardest job I’ve ever had. I’ve got to meet a lot of different people. I had a brush with the Dalai Lama – that’s one of the biggest things to happen to me, ever. My big plan now is saving up for my 50th next year because I’d really like to go home to Tassie, where I grew up, and celebrate with friends and have a proper party. You only turn 50 once!

Streetsheet

Stories, poems and pictures by Big Issue vendors and friends

VENDOR SPOTLIGHT

CAMERON

THEBIGISSUE.ORG.AU

hen I was young my family was getting ready to go to The Ekka. My mum had trouble getting my sister to put her dress on. My sister crawled under the bed and said: “Cameron should have been the girl and I should have been the boy.” In my head I said yes. As I was growing up I realised that I like dresses. One night, when I was in my teens, I rode my bike to a Lifeline bin in Morayfield. I bagged up some female clothing and took it home. I buried a toolbox in our backyard with my dresses inside it. When my family left the house to go to my brother’s football games, I would put the dresses on. I loved it. On the weekends I camped out in our backyard by myself. I’d wear my dresses inside my tent; I even slept in them. I’d sit by the campfire, listening to country music on the radio. When I got older, I’d buy drinks and sit around the campfire by myself, in a dress, having a good time. I didn’t understand what was going on at the time. I was born as a boy, so I had to keep it as a secret. In my twenties I moved around to lots of different places. I would wear my dresses in my bedroom, but

when I left my room I had to get changed. It wasn’t until I was older that I told my sister. She was very supportive. She’s got a girlfriend who’s really nice and they have transgender friends. My dad is not supportive. When I was in hospital in 2018, I told the doctor, the psychologist, and the psychiatrist about wanting to be a female. They were very supportive, so I started buying dresses again and bought a pair of knee-high boots. Now I’m 42 and I’m really working on myself. I’m getting support from family, friends, my doctor and a counsellor. I heard there’s a monthly transgender group and drag queen party at a Gold Coast nightclub. I am working towards becoming a peer support worker in a hospital to help others going through this sort of thing. I want people to be aware that people are struggling. At the moment I am still living as a man. I am worried about what people will think. But I want to start living my life. I want to start telling my story and get support from the public, if I sell The Big Issue wearing a dress. I want to be happy. Hopefully this year is my year! CAMERON NOBBYS BEACH I GOLD COAST

PHOTO BY NATHAN BRAYSHAW

This Is Me

Someone Who Cares I love my friendship with Wayne A, who is a fellow vendor here in Adelaide. He always helps me out with selling The Big Issue, and sometimes we’ll do something together like buy lunch or dinner on Friday night. We always have lots to talk about with our Big Issue work. Other times we talk about God. It is really nice to have someone who cares – that is so important to me! STEVE J ARKABA WOOLWORTHS, CASTLE PLAZA, ZUMA’S I ADELAIDE

Something Fishy I went down to a little town called Johnsonville, just outside of Lakes Entrance. I took my fishing rod, visited a few bait and tackle shops

in town, and found a couple of nice fishing spots. I was angling for bream, but they’d had a bit of rain and the water was a bit muddy – and apparently the fish don’t come out if it’s too muddy. So while I didn’t come home with a catch, I did visit the fish’n’chip shop and had gummy shark for lunch. It was pretty good down there, and the trip was well worth it. MICHAEL PRAHRAN MARKETS I MELBOURNE

On Song I’ve found things a bit tough lately, and have had to try and think about the good stuff. I’ve been going to a few footy games and love chatting to my customers about footy. The Spirit of the Streets Choir is

keeping me busy, too. We sing on the verandah instead of inside, and I’m just happy we still get to practise. As always, a big thank you to my lovely customers for keeping me going. STEVE W ELIZABETH QUAY I PERTH

Degrees of Success Hello, Daryl here. Here is an update: as most people know, I have been studying psychology and counselling. I have now completed my bachelor’s degree. This year I am doing my Grad Dip in Psychology to increase my GPA, so that I can do my honours and then my master’s degree in social psychology. The end goal is to be a research social psychologist. DARYL NORTHCOTE I MELBOURNE

ALL VENDOR CONTRIBUTORS TO STREETSHEET ARE PAID FOR THEIR WORK.

Getting Wiggly With It For many years my daughter would watch The Wiggles and go to their concerts. So, it was awesome when I saw Simon the Red Wiggle passing by while I was on my pitch. Unfortunately, my daughter wasn’t with me, but I had to get a photo with Simon to show her. And the best part was that my daughter got to speak to Simon on the phone before he left. Thank you for talking to my daughter, Simon, and getting a photo with me. You can see we did the Wiggle finger points. GLENN F DAVID JONES, CNR MARKET AND ELIZABETH STS I SYDNEY

SPONSORED BY LORD MAYOR’S CHARITABLE FOUNDATION. COMMUNITY PHILANTHROPY MAKING A DIFFERENCE IN GREATER MELBOURNE AND BEYOND.

27 MAY 2022

HOT POTATO! GLENN MEETS RED WIGGLE SIMON

Hearsay

Andrew Weldon Cartoonist

“I found myself standing on the coffee table in my living room, practising with my kids spraying water at me and blowing on me while I ran my lines.” Jennifer Connelly on practising her boating scenes for Top Gun: Maverick. VARIETY I US

I think it’s really important that people know that a lot of thought and conversation went into creating these videos.

“It’s putting us as people back in the landscape. It’s healing to people.” Rodney Carter, Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation chief executive, on new rules in Victoria that will incorporate more Indigenous languages into place names, with dual names in English and First Nations languages becoming more common. THE AGE I AU

Madonna defends her NFT artworks, made from scans of her genitalia, which depict the singer giving birth to trees, butterflies and other insects. It’s a labour of love, with sales of the artwork going to charity. TMZ I US

“When will you stop raking in huge profits while customers, animals and the environment suffer?” Actor James Cromwell (Babe) glued his hand to the Starbucks counter over a 50 cent surcharge for vegan milks. NPR I US

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“My pilot has gone incoherent and I have no idea how to fly the airplane.” A passenger, with no flying experience, who managed to land a single-engine plane at a Florida airport after the pilot became incapacitated.

boast chandeliers, artwork, fresh flowers and music. ABC I AU

“I believe that nobody has ever died eating casu marzu. If they did, maybe they were drunk. You know, when you eat it, you also drink lots of wine.” Roberto Flore, the Sardinian head of Skylab FoodLab, on the Italian island’s famous delicacy: maggotinfested cheese. Some claim it’s an aphrodisiac, others say it could be dangerous for human health.

TIMES OF INDIA I IN

“No-one’s trying to go to medical school to become a tattoo artist.” Sohyun Lim, a trainee tattoo artist in South Korea, where tattooing without one can result in fines of up to $58,000 or even imprisonment. THE AGE I AU

CNN I US

“The Golden Girls – I’m getting shivers saying this – it’s not just any show. It’s not Who’s the Boss?” Golden Girls mega-fan Bird Milliken on being one of 3500 devotees of the 80s sit-com who congregated for the inaugural Golden-Con in Chicago.

“Crisis seems to be the time when Icelanders increase their fertility.” Anton Örn Karlsson, head of demography at Iceland’s national statistics team, on the 2021 baby boom that saw a 16.5 per cent increase in births, and the return of retired midwives to deliver ice, ice, babies.

THE GUARDIAN I US

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC I US

THE GUARDIAN I US

“I said, ‘No, Daniel. I want the best toilets in Australia, maybe the world’.” Cistern Chapel Committee president Nancy Bates on being flushed with pride over the new public privies in Maryborough, Queensland, which

“We finally got him married in 2016 with the hope that we would get us a grandchild to play with in our retirement age. However, almost six years have passed and there is no child. We are facing immense mental harassment.” Sanjeev and Sadhana Prasad on suing their only son and his wife for not giving them a grandchild, saying they spent all their savings raising him, paying for his pilot’s training and his lavish wedding.

20 Questions by Rachael Wallace

01 Which novel starts with the opening

line: “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. 02 Who is replacing Leigh Sales as the

host of the ABC’s 7.30? 03 Tom kha gai is a chicken soup from

which country? 04 French fashion designer Olivier

Rousteing is the creative director of which fashion house? 05 If it’s 10am in Hobart, what time is it

in Adelaide? 06 Who recently became the first man

in history to beat both Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic at the same tournament on clay? 07 The Củ Chi tunnels are in which

city? 08 Who was Prime Minister of Australia

“When a family experiences that much socioeconomic mobility, it’s very difficult for parents that were raised at one point on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to then have a child who grows up on a completely different point, where all of those basic needs for food and shelter have already been satisfied.” Actor Simu Liu on the distance between him and his parents – whereas his mother worked rice fields

GQ I UK

“My experience of working from home is you spend an awful lot of time making another cup of coffee and then, you know, getting up, walking very slowly to the fridge, hacking off a small piece of cheese, then walking very slowly back to your laptop and then forgetting what it was you’re doing.” British PM Boris Johnson is feta up with folks working from home, saying it’s no gouda, preferring to brie-lieve people should return to the office. And in the office you can parrrrty! THE GUARDIAN I UK

“After two days, they started to sprout! Everything sprouted. I can’t tell you how astonished we were!” Anna-Lisa Paul, a horticulturist at the University of Florida, is over the moon thanks to a milestone experiment that proves plants can grow in lunar soil.

when World War I broke out? 09 Which Italian city held this year’s

Eurovision Song Contest? 10 Camelopard is an archaic name for

which animal? 11 What year were 1 cent and 2 cent

coins removed from circulation in Australia? 12 Where is a prawn’s heart located? 13 How many posts are there at the end

of each AFL field? 14 Which two actors have played Obi-

Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars films? 15 Greedy Smith was the lead vocalist

of which Australian band? 16 Which soccer player is the all-time

leading Australian international scorer? 17 What pet did poet Lord Byron keep

with him in his rooms at Cambridge as a protest at the university not allowing dogs? 18 In which country was Trivial Pursuit

created? 19 Mister Ed was a 1960s television

show about what? 20 Pointe-à-Pitre International Airport

is the main airport for which nation: a) Jamaica b) Guadeloupe c) Tahiti or d) Haiti?

SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE I US

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ANSWERS ON PAGE 44

27 MAY 2022

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD I AU

as a teenager, he started a boy band – and became a Marvel superhero.

“Access to paid family and Tuan: When I was a domestic violence kid we didn’t have any leave saves lives. electricity. No worker should Maddy: Sorry that you ever have to had to grow up in the choose between Dark Ages, Daddy. their income and Overheard in Melbourne, Vic. their safety.” Michele O’Neil, Australian Council of Trade Unions president, on the Fair Work Commission’s decision that will entitle millions of workers to 10 days’ paid domestic violence leave. EAR2GROUND

My Word

by Denise Picton @denisepicton

t’s 1967 and I am 11 years old. It’s Sunday, so my family is preparing to attend the 11am memorial meeting at the Christadelphian Temple in Halifax Street, Adelaide. Referred to as brothers and sisters, baptised adult members listen to an exhortation and then take of the bread and wine, representing the body and blood of Christ. It’s a long service and a solemn affair. I am a tidy child. My shoes have been buffed with an old piece of cloth from what Mum calls the ragbag. I am dressed in church clothes straight after breakfast because I can be trusted not to get dirty, whereas my younger sister will have her Sunday best pulled over her protesting head just before we leave. Women and girls have to cover their heads for the service, and my hat is already on my head because I’ve been told it looks fetching. My matching gloves and bag are waiting by the door. My sister sits on her straw boater. Mum is asking God what she did to deserve such a tomboy. He fails to explain. As we pull up outside the church, my sister is admonished to sit silently throughout the service without wriggling. I am thanked in advance for my usual practice of walking up to old people to ask if they are well. The oldies will pat me on my hatted head or pinch my cheek, and several of the old men will pull a sweet from their pocket and hand it to me. I don’t like the lollies they give me because they are often covered in pocket fluff, so I give them to my sister who will eat anything, including a biscuit worthy of archeological assessment she found stuck under the driver’s seat this morning. My mother will tell anyone who listens that I give my parents no trouble. My sister, on the other hand, is suspected of membership of a gang of church kids responsible for recent misdemeanors. Following the exhortation, the Serving Brethren stand up together at the appointed time in their dark suits from their front-row seats, and wordlessly walk to the end of their allotted rows to pass out the bread. It is cut into a cube, placed on a silver dish and handed down the row for the baptised to break off a small piece before passing it along. Naughty children have recently pinched a bit of the soft white bread as it passed them,

rolling it into little pellets and flicking it into the hat rims of the baptised sisters in the seats in front. My sister has been suspected of this because a woman who found the pellet in her hat remembered her distinctive giggle. When it’s time for the wine, it comes in a tray holding 12 little glasses of sherry. Naughty children deliberately sit together so the serving brother cannot reach across them all to get to every baptised person in their row, and has to rely on a child to pass it along. Dead flies and little gobs of gum have been discovered in some wine glasses. Again, my sister’s giggle is entered into evidence. My mother checked my sister’s Sunday handbag this morning before we left because someone put a cootie catcher in the collection bag. A cootie catcher is made from a piece of origami paper that children use to tell their fortunes. One was stuffed into the black felt money pouch last week. My sister is considered the likely creator, on account of the word “poo” presenting as the answer to every question the cootie catcher is asked. It is well known this is her favourite word. The hunt for gang members is heightened after this morning’s meeting. A baptised sister, whose ample bottom oozes a little between the upright slats on the brown wooden seats in our church, was advised that someone had marked the protruding bits with a black texta. She now appears to have a set of train tracks marking the back of her Sunday suit skirt. We were sitting in the row behind her. My sister is escorted to our car by the ear for interrogation. She is the prime suspect. Mum asks whether she is responsible. She sobs her innocence. Mum asks her who puts these evil thoughts into her head. Is it the King boy? Is it the Provis boy? My sister clamps her lips tight over her small, straightened teeth. She says that she will never dob. And I am sure she never will, because she would live with the consequences. Literally. The black marker used this morning has been safely returned to my bag. It would not occur to anyone to check my purse. After all, I am a tidy child who never gives our parents any trouble.

Denise Picton is an Adelaide-based author with a career spanning more than 30 years in consultancy and human services. The Family String is her debut novel.

Sometimes the devil is hiding in plain sight, writes Denise Picton.

27 MAY 2022

That’s the Spirit

PHOTO BY NEWSPIX

Letter to My Younger Self

I Was Not Destined for a Career in Finance Ian “Molly” Meldrum has long been a household name, who has counted worldfamous people among his friends – Madonna, Shane Warne, Kerry Packer – but it’s the words of his grandmother that still ring in his ears. by Jeff Jenkins

Jeff Jenkins is a journalist who worked with Molly on his two autobiographies: The Never, Um, Ever Ending Story and Ah Well, Nobody’s Perfect.

27 MAY 2022

f I could offer any words of advice to the 16-year-old me, it would be that it’s okay to be “different”. There is no “normal”. I’ve never really fitted in. A man named Molly working at the conservative old ABC in the 1970s? It was ludicrous, really. But we can all find our place in the world. I’ve always loved Oscar Wilde and he had a great saying: “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.” If I could go back in time and have a conversation with the young me, I would tell him: be prepared for a lifetime of heartache and misery. It’s not easy being a St Kilda supporter! No club has “won” more wooden spoons than the Saints. We’ve finished on the bottom of the ladder 27 times – way more than any other club. Every St Kilda supporter enters a new season with an optimism that on the basis of past experience is entirely unjustified. Despite having produced so many champion players who have given us all so much joy – legends such as Darrel Baldock, Ian Stewart, Trevor Barker, Tony

Lockett, Nicky Winmar, Robert Harvey and Nick Riewoldt – the Saints have won only one premiership. I was part of the St Kilda cheer squad on that day in 1966, but I was so excited, I fainted before the final siren, so I can’t honestly say that I’ve “seen” the Saints win a flag. Maybe this year. Or next! I bleed red, white and black (and fortunately, purple. Thank God for the mighty Melbourne Storm, who have won six Grand Finals). If you told the young me that I’d meet the Beatles, I would have said, “You’re dreaming.” I was surfing at Point Leo when I first heard the Beatles. 3AK was playing ‘She Loves You’ and I thought, I want to be a part of that. The Beatles changed so many young lives. I desperately wanted to meet John, Paul, George and Ringo when they toured Australia in 1964. But I was kicked out of their Festival Hall show in Melbourne because I was so hysterical. I then hid in the car park at the Southern Cross Hotel with Ronnie Burns and a few other friends. We were there all day and finally the lift door opened and

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IT’S GOOD TO BE THE KING, OF MOOMBA

George stepped out. We leapt out of the car, only to be nabbed by the security guards. But a few years later, I found myself in London, where I became friends with John and Paul and worked at Apple Records. John even gave me the world scoop that the Beatles were breaking up, but I was so over-awed just being in his presence that I wasn’t listening. My biggest scoop – and I missed it! If you’d called me “Molly” when I was a teenager, I would have wondered, What’s all that about? Growing up in Quambatook, in the Mallee in Victoria, I had two nicknames: Mallee Chick and Mallee Root. I loved growing up in the Mallee and it’s still a big part of me. I remember interviewing the Red Hot Chili Peppers and telling them they looked “as fit as Mallee bulls”. Anthony Kiedis looked at me rather strangely. “What,” he said, “we’re as fit as Molly’s balls?” The Molly name came from my friend Stan Rofe, Melbourne’s greatest radio DJ, who was like a mentor to me. We both wrote columns for the music paper Go-Set and we’d playfully send each other up. One week, Stan vowed to get me back for something I’d written about him, and he decided to give me a girl’s name. He later told me that he’d planned to call me “Mildred”, but for some reason he wrote “Molly”. Most people have called me Molly ever since. It’s never annoyed me, though it has occasionally caused me some drama. When I first went to London at the end of the 60s, The Sun’s music writer cheekily wrote that Ian and Molly Meldrum were off to visit the Queen. My mother was distraught. “Oh Ian,” she cried over the phone. “How could you get married and not tell us?” I guess it has been like a marriage in some ways. I am definitely Ian, but I’m also Molly – I even have a Molly tattoo on my left arm. About a decade after I got the tattoo, I returned to the tattoo parlour on Sunset Boulevard to get it re-coloured. Initially, the tattooist thought that I wanted to change the name. Then he was impressed. “Oh wow,” he said, “you’re still with the same girl, that’s great!” And it’s true – Molly and I have been together a very long time. I would tell any young person: don’t be afraid to push boundaries. Everyone thought I was crazy when I was producing ‘The Real Thing’. And I probably was. I was adding atom bombs, strange speeches and a psychedelic mantra: Ooh ma ma ma mow. My friend Brian Cadd, who played on the song, called it “the alien monster in the basement – the song just grew

TOP: ON THE COUNTDOWN SET MIDDLE: WITH DARYL SOMERS ON THE LAST NIGHT OF HEY HEY IT'S SATURDAY BOTTOM: GO SAINTS!

27 MAY 2022

you do your homework. Though sometimes things don’t go according to plan. At the start of 1984, I went to the US to interview Van Halen and a stack of other artists for Countdown. While in New York, I hung out with the wonderful Australian band Real Life, who were doing some shows with Eurythmics at the Roxy. After every gig, a huge screen would descend on the stage and they played music videos. One clip caught my eye – a song called ‘Burning Up’. I asked around and found out it was a new artist named Madonna. I told my travelling companion, the great Australian recording executive Peter “Iris” Ikin, that I wanted to do an interview with her. But he told me not to worry, because I was too busy and she was not a priority for the label. But I insisted. Anyway, the day I was scheduled to meet Madonna, I had five other interviews. When I finally got back to the Warner office, Iris started berating me for being late. Stupidly, I was being cheeky and I said, “I don’t care, who the fuck’s Madonna anyhow?” From around the corner came a defiant voice: “I’m fucking Madonna, what the fuck is a Molly?” And that was the start of a beautiful friendship. I’d tell my younger self to stay away from ladders. After his near‑death experience, my mate Kerry Packer famously said, “I’ve been to the other side and let me tell you, son, there’s fucking nothing there.” I had no such revelation when I fell off a ladder at my home just before Christmas in 2011, but I do know that it’s great to be alive. And I will always be grateful to the incredible medical team who put me back together again. In the past year, I have lost some dear friends, including Michael Gudinski, Bert Newton and Shane Warne. Life is precious. Enjoy every moment with friends and families. And cherish the memories. And always treat people respectfully. When I was a young boy, my grandmother told me: “Remember, no-one is above you, no-one is below you. Treat everyone the same.” These are still good words to live by.

PHOTOS CITY OF MELBOURNE, ABC, NEWSPIX, GETTY

and grew”. It was the first Australian single to run for more than six minutes. The record company hated it and didn’t want to release it. But more than 50 years later, radio is still playing it and the remarkable Russell Morris is still out there making great music. I have learned that there is nothing more rewarding than working with other people. Everything great that I’ve been a part of has involved a team of people. ‘The Real Thing’ would never have worked if not for all the musicians and recording engineer John Sayers, who was able to translate my crazy ideas. Countdown would never have happened if not for two great ABC producers, Michael Shrimpton and Robbie Weekes. And Hey Hey It’s Saturday would not have been as much fun for me without Daryl, Ossie, John Blackman, Plucka and the entire crew. Nothing beats being part of a team. If I was back at school, I’d tell myself to slow down and pay more attention. But I doubt that I’d take any notice. A journalist once asked Michael Shrimpton if he could sum me up. Michael said I was “a collection of nouns searching for a verb”. And I remember the late, great Greedy Smith from Mental As Anything said: “To err is human, to umm is unforgivable.” Believe it or not, I still get nervous being on TV. My mind is always filled with a million thoughts and I often get a little mixed up. Try as I might – and my interview with Prince Charles is a great example of me really trying – I was never going to be a superslick TV presenter. I could only be myself. Whether it’s new music or new experiences, I have always been open to everything. After I moved to Melbourne, I worked in a bank. Though many people have called me a “banker”, I was not destined for a career in finance. But the bank was across the road from the Junction Oval, St Kilda’s then home ground, so that was my first connection to the club. I caught the same bus as Ronnie Burns and ended up living with his family for nine years. Ronnie had a band called The Flies who supported the Rolling Stones. The first story I wrote for Go-Set was about Ronnie and then I wrote about a TV show called Kommotion, which led to my first job in television. My point is: it’s been a long and winding road, but one thing leads to another and you never know where you’re going to end up. If I bumped into my 16-year-old self now, I would tell him to fasten his seat belt, you’re in for a bumpy ride. But it’s going to be a hell of a lot of fun. Old Molly would tell schoolboy Ian to always be prepared – make sure

PHOTO BY GETTY

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BLONDIE HANGIN’ TOUGH. BACK (L-R): NIGEL HARRISON, CHRIS STEIN, JIMMY DESTRI, CLEM BURKE. FRONT: FRANK INFANTE AND DEBBIE HARRY

HANGING ON THE... What do music legends talk about when they get together? Writer Sam Delaney got a front-row seat when the Smiths’ Johnny Marr caught up with Blondie to chat rock’n’roll, knitting and boring awards shows. by Sam Delaney The Big Issue UK @delaneyman

27 MAY 2022

egendary Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr used to play cover versions of Blondie singles ‘Denis’ and ‘Hanging on the Telephone’ (both, ironically, covers themselves) in his first teenage band. When he met his wife, Angie, at a house party in Manchester, aged 15, he remembers Blondie’s classic 1978 album Parallel Lines being on the stereo. His love of the New York post-punk legends has been a constant throughout his life. So how does it feel that he now writes songs for them? He contributed ‘My Monster’ to their 2017 album Pollinator and has written another, ‘Spectrolite’, which will appear on their next record – and joins them as special guest on their UK tour. “It’s magical,” he says. “I’ve always shared a musical sensibility with them. Plus they’re great people to be around. They’re the only band that nobody doesn’t like.”

Marr is talking to me via Zoom from his rehearsal studio on the outskirts of Manchester. Also on the call are Blondie’s songwriter-in-chief and guitarist Chris Stein, from downtown New York City, and, from her charmingly appointed living room in New Jersey, Debbie Harry. I’m in my garden shed in South West London. This is the first time the three of them, now old friends and colleagues, have seen each other in a while – as you can tell from the banter.

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TOP: DEBBIE HARRY, 1979 BOTTOM: JOHNNY MARR, 1987

Johnny Marr: Hi Debbie. Hi Chris. I’m looking forward to seeing you on the tour. Chris Stein: Yeah, well, listen, I’m not coming. Johnny: What?! Debbie Harry: You’re a dirty rat! Haha. Chris: Look, I was diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat, you know? So I’m okay. But the medications I take are kinda fatiguing. My stamina isn’t what it used to be. I’m just gonna get a replacement for me and the band should do okay. But I hope not to disappoint everybody – especially you. Johnny: I understand. That’s a shame but we’ll find another excuse to hang out soon. Thanks for the invitation to tour anyway. I should have said that straight away. It was a real thrill to be asked. Took me about three seconds to think about. Debbie: Three seconds? Well, that’s too long. But look, it couldn’t be better. We love you. We love the way that you write and the way that you think. It’s going to be a great show. The Big Issue: How do you approach touring these days – Johnny, I know you’re really into sober, healthy living? Johnny: Yeah, I quit drink years ago, but not because I had any big moment of revelation. It was like everything I do – I just saw it as a progressive move. I thought it made me a better musician. And more interesting. It gave me more time and more energy. I was bored with drinking. I didn’t want to be that guy, you know, getting into my forties still doing all that stuff. It’s a bit of a cliché. It actually happened at a good time in my life. And it made me go where I needed to go as a musician – my lyrics got better, my playing got more intense and my shows got better. I always say if I thought partying

would make me a better songwriter, I’d be doing it. I don’t have any kind of puritanical thing about it, it’s just what I’ve got going works for me, especially on the road. Debbie: Well I’m curious about how I will respond to being back out on the road since I haven’t done it for a couple of years. But I agree – I’ve had to change my behaviour over the years, and behaviour is very hard to change. So bravo to both of us for that. On tour these days I do what the women during the French Revolution would do. I sit there knitting and rocking back and forth. I will be bringing my knitting needles with me. Chris: Well, I’ve been writing my memoir, and I realised that I had so much to write about addiction because I was taking drugs in one shape or form for my whole career. And there are so many war stories like, “Hey, remember that time we scored from that guy who sold us bleach and we shot that up and went to hospital? It was great!” Getting over that stuff, it’s a process. But I haven’t really done anything for 20 years. You know, I was never a drinker. I was just always an addict. Johnny: Yeah, I’m such a lightweight now. Even if I smoked some weed now I’d be, like, crying under the sofa. But I think my sensibilities from being a teenager have stayed the same. And my kind of values have stayed the same. That became even more obvious to me with the political scene with Brexit and Trump and all of this. I almost reverted back to the 15-year-old unreasonable pothead I used to be. I just went back to thinking that half the world were twats and the other half were okay. Chris: I used to think that the masses were more intelligent than the individual. But now I’m like you: I’ve gone back to thinking everyone is an idiot. Debbie: Oh, grow up, Chris! Hahaha. We’re going backwards! Chris: I just watched [Netflix documentary series] The Andy Warhol Diaries. All throughout the thing, Debbie is presented as a big superstar, you know, and she’s up there with Liz Taylor and all these people. But when all that shit was going on with us, we never felt like that ever. We were always like, “Oh, yeah, we’re gonna be a cult band.” It’s never presented that way now. It’s presented as if we were considered global superstars at the time. In retrospect, it’s just weird to me, because it wasn’t part of our experience that Debbie was a big superstar icon. Yeah, okay, now she is – but we had to wait this fucking long before it’s presented back to us like that.

DEBBIE HARRY

TOP: DEBBIE HARRY WITH CHRIS STEIN, 2019 BOTTOM: STEIN AND HARRY AWARDED BY MARR, 2016

JOHNNY MARR’S NEW ALBUM FEVER DREAMS PTS 1-4 IS OUT NOW. BLONDIE TOUR THE USA IN AUGUST.

27 MAY 2022

On tour these days I do what the women during the French Revolution would do. I sit there knitting and rocking back and forth.

The Big Issue: Maybe it was a set-up? Debbie: I don’t think so. I have never seen Chris Rock’s face reflect those kind of feelings. It was a revelation, you know? To see this person out of his character – for a moment he was really caught. It was clearly a surprise. Johnny: I’m glad something happened at the Oscars for once. I don’t know whether you’ve ever been. It’s boring. Debbie: I went to an Oscars party once and Arnold Schwarzenegger walked up to me and said that I looked very healthy. Johnny: I hope you said, “Well so do you, mate.” Debbie: I said, “Thank you. I work out, Arnold. Can’t you tell?” Chris: Arnold should be president. As much as I think most people in California thought he was a terrible governor, I still think he should be president. Debbie: Well, he has a terrific amount of world experience. And I mean, he doesn’t really have motivations to make money from political deals, I believe. Chris: Yeah, but then it’s all about the power. And that’s what’s going on with Putin. He thinks he’s the tsar. Johnny: Yeah, yeah. And the scary thing with people like him is, they really want to go down in history. Weirdly, as powerful as he is, I kind of think there’s got to be something very needy about someone like that, you know? The Big Issue: There’s been a lot of anger in the UK about our response to the refugee crisis. Chris: You guys are notorious for that shit. It’s all those fucking Tories you’ve got. The Big Issue: Debbie, how did you feel about the Trump years? Debbie: I thought it was poisonous, really. That children were taken from their families and sent to unknown destinations – it was just destruction for the sake of destruction, and nothing to do with humanity or anything smart. Just plain old prejudice at its highest level. The Big Issue: Did you ever meet Trump? Debbie: I did. I used to see [magician] Penn Jillette from Penn and Teller and we’ve remained friends. He was on [the US version of The Apprentice] doing a task where they had to invent a new flavour of ice cream and invite people along to try it. He invited me along and introduced me to Trump, who just said “Hello” and walked right off. It was so brief, I was surprised. I guess maybe I wasn’t tall enough for him.

PHOTOS BY GETTY. FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE BIG ISSUE UK, ED #1508, BIGISSUE.COM @BIGISSUE

Debbie: Yeah, I don’t even feel that way today, to be honest. I just feel like it’s a privilege to be an artist. But I do have the kind of neurotic off-centre sensibility which keeps me away from feeling like a real superstar and also, in a way, has saved me from some big mistakes in my life. Although I have made plenty of those too. The Big Issue: Congratulations on winning an Oscar, Johnny [Marr played guitar on the Academy Award-winning Bond theme ‘No Time to Die’, sung by Billie Eilish]. Johnny: God, I thought none of you were ever gonna mention that! The Big Issue: Well Chris and Debbie didn’t so I thought I ought to. Debbie: Well, after the big slapping scene [the Will Smith/Chris Rock incident] who can remember anything? But well done Johnny, it was worthwhile and you definitely earned it. Johnny: Well, my bit was really easy. Come on. I mean, I just play guitar on this great song, but thank you. The Big Issue: Have you ever seen anything like that at an awards show before? Chris: Well, we were involved in a good one at our Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction [in 2006]. Frankie [Infante, former Blondie guitarist] was up on stage with us and decided that it was a good moment to address grievances in front of the audience, about not being asked to play with us that night. We had the new version of Blondie at that point [Infante had left the band and was in legal dispute with them over royalties]. Everyone was expecting the Sex Pistols to overshadow everything that night because they were being inducted too. But all they did was not bother to show up and send a letter telling everyone to stick the award up their arses or whatever. Debbie: We were sort of thinking of having a food fight but everyone was quite nicely dressed that night, so that idea got voted down in the end. Johnny: What comes to mind actually was an awards ceremony in London [the GQ Man of the Year awards in 2006]. Fairly early into the proceedings, Rod Stewart stood up and demanded that Russell Brand apologise for being indiscreet in the media about his daughter. People weren’t even drunk yet. He really took Russell Brand to task. And you know what? I have to say, I was really impressed with Rod Stewart for that, because it was probably awkward for him. Chris: Anyway, Chris Rock’s ticket sales have surged after the slap, so that’s good for him.

Welcome to Pleistocene Park, home to Siberia’s mammoth scheme to cool the planet and save us all. by Steven MacKenzie The Big Issue UK @stevenmackenzie

n the far northeast of Russia – inside the Arctic Circle, further east than Japan – a mini‑caravan of camels are adapting to their first Siberian winter. It’s -20C. Do camels like the snow? “I am not sure any animals really like the snow, but camels do well,” says Nikita Zimov, director of Pleistocene Park. “We will be able to tell better next year. But they have extremely good fur so they should be good.” Camels are just one of the unexpected animals found in the reserve. There are bison, yak, cows, goats and sheep too. The park was started by Nikita’s scientist father Sergey. In 1988 he was stationed in remote Siberia to study the ecology. When the Soviet Union disintegrated, Sergey stayed. He discovered two things. During the Pleistocene period, ending over 11,000 years ago, Siberia was like the Serengeti. Sergey found remains of lions, wolves and other large mammals, including the largest of all – mammoths. He was also the first to realise that thawing permafrost would release enormous volumes of greenhouse gases.

PHOTO BY GETTY. TEXT COURTESY OF THE BIG ISSUE UK ED#1487, BIGISSUE.COM @BIGISSUE

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The Real Jurassic Park

FIND OUT MORE AT PLEISTOCENEPARK.ORG. RACE FOR TOMORROW BY SIMON MUNDY IS OUT NOW.

27 MAY 2022

But it’s not just climate scientists who visit the slump. Every season, the freshly unfrozen ground brings up mammoth remains. With a crackdown on ivory imports, there’s a “tusk rush”, with mammoth tusks selling for big money in the Chinese market. “There are lots of bones at the megaslump itself,” Mundy says. “I went to an illegal tusk hunting camp, where these guys are trying to put the process into overdrive by blasting the earth with hosepipes. “I have a photo of me holding a mammoth hip – absolutely enormous. Obviously I couldn’t take that with me but I did take a couple of tiny fragments of bone, which the hunters gave me as a souvenir.” It’s not all about bones. Complete specimens, their flesh and fur preserved, have been uncovered too. If you want to resurrect a mammoth, it turns out there are two methods. “In South Korea a company called Sooam Biotech is leading an international effort to clone a mammoth, basically using the same principle that you see in Jurassic Park – you find some ancient DNA and use it to produce a clone of a long-extinct animal,” says Mundy. “They have found incredibly well-preserved mammoths. Some of them actually have liquid blood – when you thaw them out, blood flows from the mammoth – but the DNA has broken down. They haven’t been able to find a way to use it to clone a mammoth, but they believe it’s possible. “You start with the genome of the modern elephant and edit it to make it similar to a mammoth – much bigger, bigger tusks, woollier of course, able to tolerate the extreme cold of Siberia.” In September last year, Harvard geneticist George Church and his funders announced the launch of Colossal, a $21 million project to create a mammoth-like creature (or at least an embryo – Church said getting a calf would be more expensive). There is also a less fanciful aim, helping conservation efforts for existing species by, for example, editing the genome of an elephant to make it resistant to certain pathogens. But it’s resurrecting mammoths that grabs attention. Mundy adds: “[Church] claims he will be able to do it within a decade. And he’s said the first specimen will be sent to Pleistocene Park.” Before then, Nikita Zimov is planning the immediate future. “Our [park] is getting full,” he says. “I am starting the process of fencing in 144km2. After, we will continue introducing more animals – main choice would be bison, horses and maybe more camels. They are just so awesome and I really like them. “Of course, we want to expand. We want millions of animals to create self-sustaining grazing ecosystems. We want to learn how to create these most effectively and fully understand the impacts they have on the climate, people and other ecosystems. “Many people assume that ecosystems are controlled by the climate; however, most vegetation is controlled by animals.”

So Sergey came up with an unconventional solution. “The aim of Pleistocene Park is to restore grazing ecosystems,” Nikita says. “To create the world’s largest and richest true wild ecosystem and through that mitigate climate change.” Joined by his son, Sergey established a zone of 20km2 and introduced herds of grazing animals to the area to replicate conditions seen during the last Ice Age. “Unlike North America and Europe, most of Russia was not glaciated,” Nikita explains. Since then, the steppes have been taken over by forests. In tropical areas, trees are important carbon absorbers, but in cold regions they shelter the earth, trapping heat that melts the permafrost. Turning forests into grasslands keeps the ground cooler, especially when it’s covered in snow. And if that snow is trampled by herds of animals, it becomes a compact layer that keeps the ground frozen for longer. The impact of the climate crisis is most notable in the extremes – and the Zimovs live on the extreme. In 30 years they’ve noticed changes. “Over the last three decades, temperatures increased by three degrees,” says Nikita. “Winter is getting shorter, milder. Those changes are already visible not only to meteorologists but to regular people.” Thawing permafrost is already responsible for the same level of carbon dioxide emissions as all international passenger flights. And it becomes a cycle – the higher the temperature gets, the more emissions – and rising carbon dioxide emissions drive up the temperature. That’s why innovations like the Zimovs’ are worth paying attention to. The results are coming in. “Animals grazing are allowing grasses and herbs to become the dominant vegetation,” Nikita says. “We have more carbon in the soil, because productive vegetation is creating deeper root systems. Grasslands and meadows are reflecting higher portions of energy back to space, staying cooler than dark forest and shrublands.” The animal that could speed up the return of grasslands the most is the mammoth. Problem is, none have been around for a while. They last roamed the Earth 3700 years ago. The are, however, resurfacing from the permafrost at an alarming rate. Climate writer Simon Mundy found plenty when he visited the Batagaika Megaslump, 1000km west of the park. It’s a bizarrely named but vitally important place. “It’s an enormous hole in the ground created by the thawing permafrost,” Mundy says. “A visually spectacular illustration of the scale and force of what’s happening.” Twenty-five years ago the slump was barely a ditch; now it could swallow the Sydney Opera House. It’s exposed a vast wedge in the permafrost, expanding by 12-14 metres per year. “The Russian permafrost zone is the size of China, Afghanistan and Nigeria combined, and growing parts of it are thawing,” Mundy says. “It’s a bit like switching off your freezer for a few days. Everything inside will start to rot. That’s basically what’s happening right across Siberia. Microbes feed on this ancient frozen matter from the last Ice Age. They break it down and that process emits huge amounts of carbon dioxide and methane, which has a significant heating effect on the planet.”

series by Matthew Abbott

The Big Picture

Keep on Truckin’ Nick and Joanna Atkins are wedded to the dusty roads of the West Australian outback – and the community they forged along the way. by Matthew Abbott @mattabbottphoto

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Matthew Abbott is a Sydney-based storyteller and photojournalist.

FOR MORE IMAGES, VISIT MATTHEWABBOTT.COM.AU.

27 MAY 2022

t the coldest point in the day, Joanna Atkins emerges from her home: a converted shipping container sitting on the back of a road train, parked on the side of a dirt track in the middle of the Kimberley. Joanna walks to the fire still smouldering from the evening, where her dog Lin is curled up. She adds some kindling to take away the chill. Brewing tea on a camp stove is a morning ritual. Joanna’s husband Nick joins her for the cuppa, but they sit in silence, occasionally smiling at Lin who the couple thinks is a “pretty weird dog”. “We gave up talking years ago,” Joanna says. “We know each other and know what we have to do.” On the outskirts of Kununurra in Western Australia’s far north, a 512km road snakes its way through one of the most remote parts of Australia. Nick and Joanna both grew up on the road. It’s where they met and spent their honeymoon. It’s the closest thing to a home they have, at least for the months during the dry season. Nick, 45, and Joanna, 33, are a dying breed, being two of the last owner-operator truckies who work in the Kimberley. They started working on the Gibb River-Kalumburu Road 10 years ago and know every pitch and bend and all the characters who populate the lonely stretch of dirt. It’s part of their identity. “The road is a community in itself,” Joanna says. Nick and Joanna are a lifeline for the cattle stations and tourist spots along the route and the town at the end of the journey, Kalumburu – home to 412 people. Many remote communities have poor access to services and essential items, as well as failing infrastructure. Lighter, more fragile goods are brought in by barge and air, but the couple deliver the heavier items in their triple road train: from fridges and bulky machinery, to slabs of Coke and drums of fuel. Every year during the northern wet season, Kalumburu is cut off from the rest of the country by floodwaters, usually from October to May. Nick and Joanna’s work can begin only once the last rains have gone, and the road has dried out enough to support their 70-tonne road train. The first run is always the hardest. They are both drivers and mechanics. Sometimes they have to get out of the truck and use a loader or their bare hands to rebuild the road before moving any further. The work is physical and unrelenting. More than a job, it’s a way of life. “If we don’t do it, who will?” Joanna says. “A decade on and our gear and our bodies have taken a hiding. I think we’ll keep going until we just can’t do it anymore.” But Joanna acknowledges that come the start of this dry season they most likely will have forgotten the pain and hardships, and will be eager to get back on the road.

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Nick and Joanna’s rig is longer than an Olympic swimming pool

“We aren’t rich, but we are always on holidays,” says Joanna, relaxing after a days’ driving

Nick drives carefully over corrugated roads

The couple bathe in the last light of day

27 MAY 2022

A small creek crossing on the journey to Kalumburu

Morning tea on the road

by Sian Prior @sianprior

Sian Prior’s latest book, Childless: A Story of Freedom and Longing is out through Text Publishing. This is an extract.

n the books I read as a child there were good guys and bad guys. There were those who deserved happy endings and those who didn’t: a moral order. I should probably have paid more attention to the games we played at childhood birthday parties. Musical chairs. Pass the parcel. Pin the tail on the donkey. It wasn’t about who tried the hardest or who deserved to win, it was about where you were when the music stopped. Who had the parcel when it was time to tear off the last layer. Whether you were facing the donkey when you stopped spinning. Just like my father’s death, it was random. The truth is, not all the stories had happy endings. Some had no ending at all. There were certain books in our house I couldn’t bear to open. I knew exactly where they were – at the bottom of the bookshelf in the living room – and averted my eyes whenever I walked past them. One was a book on Australian wildlife containing detailed life-size illustrations of spiders. Redbacks, huntsmen, funnel-webs – I’d seen them once and that was enough. In a children’s book there was a picture of a hairy giant with many mouths holding a tiny naked baby upside down by her feet. The baby was called Cuddlepie, but I wasn’t fooled by the cute name. This was not a cuddly book. The hairy giant – who was called The Wicked Banksia Man – was dangling the baby over a deep hole. Did he let go of her? I can’t remember. That book was banished to the bottom shelf too. Even the man who invented sweet Winnie the Pooh wrote scary stories. My mother loved AA Milne with the passion of a lifelong Anglophile. Growing up, I was expected to love him too. But it wasn’t all honeypots and marmalade for breakfast. One of the poems in When We Were Very Young has a child in a red coat striding along a pavement, instructing the reader on how to avoid being eaten by “masses of bears”. Don’t step on the lines. Keep in the squares. This is what good children

need to do, to make sure terrible things don’t happen to them or to the people they love. You’d think I’d feel safe with the story of Cinderella. Who could resist the princess-in-waiting with the perfect feet? But there was a lot of meanness in Cinderella’s world. The stepmother was a nightmare. And where the hell was Cinderella’s father? Why didn’t he protect her from all that meanness? Was Cinderella secretly hoping an alternative father-figure might come along and rescue her? There was another book on the bottom shelf I couldn’t look at. It had a picture inside the front cover of a giant wielding a cudgel. He had red hair and a red shirt and a gaping smile; he was striding through surf, where one huge foot had just sent two children tumbling headfirst out of a boat and into the pounding waves. On the shore two other children were running away from the grinning giant. The words on the page came from the mouth of the giant, who apparently spoke in rhyming couplets: Fe-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman: Be he alive or be he dead, I’ll grind his bones to make my bread. I still remember the yawning horror of the giant’s grin and the sound those grinding English bones made in my imagination. The things we fear usually catch up with us. Somehow that book has ended up in my possession. It’s stained with age now, the spine peeling, the giant’s red shirt fading to pink. There are some details in the picture that I’d forgotten. In the water behind the giant, a man is drowning. Another drowned man lies face down on the beach. I don’t remember making the connection when I was a child. Now I find myself wondering – who thought this book was a good gift for children who’d lost their father to drowning? Who leafed through these pages and didn’t see the pounding surf or the flailing man? Or maybe this book was in our family before our father disappeared under the waves. Maybe he read it to my sister at bedtime, not realising that The End – his end – was hidden in those pages. On the back cover of this book there’s a picture of a lion and a unicorn sitting up at a table, drinking tea. Someone has scribbled all over them with a violent black pencil. Perhaps it was me. Perhaps when I couldn’t bear to look at the murderous giant I turned the book over and paid out on the happy couple.

Growing up without her father was no fairytale, writes Sian Prior.

27 MAY 2022

Picture This

by Ricky French @frenchricky

PHOTO BY JAMES BRAUND

n the eve of his 15th birthday, he’s already a fully qualified firefighter and paramedic. He’s been gunning for this since about the age of five, around the time I started writing an annual ode to his existence and that strange, ephemeral thing that is childhood, in the pages of this magazine. As I write this he’s in his bedroom at his computer, putting out fires and arresting bad guys in the virtual town of Greenville. Yes, I know, computer games are hideous things that turn our kids into zombies, make them dull, and encourage them to commit mass murder and/or not do their homework, but I’m actually quite proud of the way he’s climbed the ranks in this very serious roleplay world. He conducts training sessions with people all over the world via his headset and microphone. He sounds authoritative; I’d put my hands behind my back and get on the floor in an instant for him. When I first introduced readers to Dorian 10 years ago he’d just fallen out of his bunk bed, landing on his Lego mat. I scooped him up and put him back in bed. The next night he did it again. I scooped him up again. Parenting’s a bit like that. Something about fixing up mistakes, teaching resilience, getting back on the horse, or the bunk. He still sleeps in the same bunk bed, but his legs nearly dangle out the end. The scooping days are long gone, as are the nights we’d come home late and I’d extract him from the back seat of the car and carry him inside. He would stir just enough to nuzzle his face under my chin, and always insist on pulling his own covers over him when I dumped him into bed. He’s always looked after himself, always had a sense of responsibility. Last year he decided not to join us on a family junket to a luxury farm stay, as it would mean missing two days of school. Also, Mum and Dad are officially boring. So, he stayed home alone,

making his own dinner, taking himself to school, putting the recycling bin out. We’ve always tried to give him experiences, encouraged him to take risks, although he’s hardly a daredevil. His mind is sharper than any tack, but he hasn’t quite grown into his body – put trust in his inherited athleticism. I’m still waiting for that confidence to arrive, and I wonder what I can do to help tease it out. He’s fascinated by politics and war, knows every world leader and even some local ones. If I want to know what electorate I’m in, I’ll ask him. “State or federal?” he’ll ask back. He’s long overtaken Mum in height, but I’m still hanging on by a centimetre or two. He reminds me he’s got four years of growing to do. Is that all? Four years of childhood, or adolescence, or whatever they call this. So much of who he was is already gone. He’ll never again dress up as a knight to catch the train into town, will never insist on taking an old chair leg on holiday, pretending it’s a rifle. I accepted he’d grow out of all that, but I didn’t think he’d ever lose the Lego obsession. When I mourn for the loss of his childhood, it’s that unmistakable sound of hands rummaging through Lego that I miss the most. One year until he gets his learner’s permit. One week until he can apply for a job – a real one. One day I’ll look back at this time and think he was still so young. I wrote last year that this year would be the last of his annual birthday columns, and I think it was the right call. From five to 15, it has a nice ring to it. No 16-year-old wants Dad writing about them in a magazine. I say this now, but who knows what the future will bring for any of us.

Ricky is a writer, musician and proud dad. Fellow columnist Fiona Scott-Norman is taking a short break.

27 MAY 2022

In the Blink of an Eye

One day I’ll look back at this time and think he was still so young.

Ricky

Space Is the Place

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Music

Spiritualized

Art rocker Jason Pierce may be better known by his cosmic moniker J Spaceman, but when it comes to talking music, he’s refreshingly down to earth. by Keva York @kevasyork

Keva York is a writer and film critic based in Melbourne.

gentle synth trills and occasional beeps – specifically, the kind heard on the Apollo 11 transmission, known as Quindar tones. Five albums and 25 years on, the latest Spiritualized album, Everything Was Beautiful, opens with a nod to this landmark work. The euphoric, Quindar tone-studded opener ‘Always Together With You’ begins with the murmured utterance of the album title – not by Kate Radley, the former keyboardist and girlfriend who broke with the band, and Pierce, around the time of Ladies and Gentlemen…, but by the frontman’s daughter, Poppy. “We just reissued the first four albums, so that album was fresh [in my] mind,” says Pierce, “and by announcing the [new] album in that way, and putting the transmission signal in, it gave the whole thing a kind of perspective – like it was an observation from somebody who was outside the planet looking in.” Indeed, that’s the perspective that has always seemed to come most naturally to Pierce, who has operated under the moniker J Spaceman on and off since the

EVERYTHING WAS BEAUTIFUL IS OUT NOW. SPIRITUALIZED PLAY VIVID SYDNEY 16 JUNE.

27 MAY 2022

PHOTO BY JULIETTE LARTHE

Space is currently being occupied by rich tax exiles who just want a better view.

days of Spacemen 3, the band he formed with Peter Kember – aka Sonic Boom – as teenagers in Rugby, Warwickshire, mutually electrified by the discovery of psychedelic drugs and music. “It seemed like we were spacemen,” Pierce has said of that era, “like we weren’t doing the things that made it easy to slot into normal life in Rugby.” Born in the bitter implosion of Spacemen 3, Spiritualized would see Pierce drift further away from Earth, in pursuit of an increasingly baroque sound – violins! gospel choirs! flugelhorn! – that was nevertheless near weightless. And yet the Ladies and Gentlemen-esque touches on ‘Always Together With You’ were the very last things recorded for the album. Pierce had felt that the track wasn’t quite working. “I thought it was a big ask to listen to six, seven minutes of doo-wop chords at the top of an hour,” he says drolly. These little additions provided “a kind of magic, a context that really wasn’t there before.” I ask if the intent was to signal some particular kinship between the two albums, but Pierce demurs. It’s more to do with his tendency to riff on concepts or lyrics drawn from the expanse of his own back catalogue: “I steal from everybody, I can steal from myself quite happily,” he reasons. “I say myself, it’s a kind of joke, I write the same song over and over.” What frustrates him is the critical reaction that frames this as a negative. “People have this kind of imaginary artist that they’re looking for that’s forever chopping and changing in a kind of Bowieesque way – like that’s what great art is. I’ve no real interest in making something the likes of which sounds ‘like no music you’ve ever heard’, you know. I explore the themes that interest me and try to push them to new areas. Great artists – to me – always sound like themselves. “There’s something deep in this kind of music that I find mesmerising,” he continues. “Free jazz against silent space; soul music shapes and arpeggiated guitars – I just find it endlessly exciting.” It’s precisely this kind of sustained fascination that serves as the animating force of many of Pierce’s songs: it’s through the repetition of simple melodic and verbal phrases, layers of instrumentation added and shed in turn, that tracks like Everything Was Beautiful closer ‘I’m Coming Home Again’ achieve their heavenly emotional heights. At the time of the 1969 moon landing, Pierce was but a toddler. Half a century later, the idea of space exploration, unfortunately, connotes something more wearisome, more worldly. “Space is currently being occupied by rich tax exiles who just want a better view,” muses Pierce when I ask, semi-facetiously, if he harbours any dreams of actual interplanetary travel. “I think I’d wait until there were better passengers.” For now, then, rock’n’roll remains the final frontier.

’ve just this minute woken up, so I guess we’re kind of on the same trip here,” comes the British lilt of legendary space-rock pioneer Jason Pierce down the line. It’s early in Melbourne, where I am, but it’s late in England’s Newcastle, where Pierce – the nucleus of the musical entity known as Spiritualized, now in its fourth decade of sonic exploration – has awoken. “We started straight onto the UK tour after the US,” he continues, “and we’re still kind of somewhere between time zones.” “Somewhere between time zones” is a description that could well be applied to the music of Spiritualized. Expansive and hypnotic, it has the power to suspend the listener, as in a UFO’s beam, on a stratum beyond the reach of any earthly clock. “Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space,” intones a woman’s voice at the start of the 1997 album of the same name, still regarded as the band’s magnum opus. Twenty years after NASA launched its Golden Record into the cosmos, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space landed in record stores sounding like an artefact from some distant planet. The transcendent opening track blooms into being with strains of Pachelbel’s Canon underpinned by

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Film

Sirens

Precious Metal When filmmaker Rita Baghdadi saw a picture of an all-female Lebanese metal band standing in a forest, she knew she’d found her people. by Cher Tan

Cher Tan is an essayist, critic and editor living and working on unceded Wurundjeri land.

SLAVE TO THE MUSIC: GUITARIST LILAS MAYASSI

27 MAY 2022

Baghdadi is adamant about the power of the filmmaker’s eye. “When I’m making a film, I’m just observing,” she says. “I’m not giving direction. I’m just there as a witness with my camera, looking through the lens and asking, ‘What ABOVE: SLAVE am I seeing? What is TO SIRENS LEFT: jumping out at me? RITA BAGHDADI AT GLASTONBURY Where is the emotion?’ I’m always trying to follow the emotion. [With Sirens] I wanted to be respectful of where the story was taking me, rather than imposing.” But production came with its own challenges. Between the ongoing global pandemic and the August 2020 dock explosion catastrophe in Beirut, Baghdadi had to navigate inconsistent access to electricity (which she resolved by bringing lots of batteries and portable hard drives), as well as filming around the 17 October Revolution of 2019. What’s more, as an independent production, the film did not have full financing. “There was barely enough money to travel there, buy a hard drive, and pay myself,” Baghdadi says. “I’d have to go back to America and shoot or direct something to make money,” she says. Baghdadi kept up that cycle for three years. Social justice filmmaking can be extractive and voyeuristic, turning subjects into objects for an outsider’s gaze, but the friendship and care that Baghdadi worked to nurture between herself and the members of Slave to Sirens is plain to see. Sirens is essentially a coming-of-age journey for Mayassi and Bechara as they come to grips with their sexuality in a country that frowns upon queerness. Although “an LGBT story wasn’t planned,” Baghdadi notes that, “with trust and time, Lilas opened up and I saw what she was struggling with”. In doing so, Sirens also portrays the tensions that come with a deep desire for independence – for women especially – in an inherently conservative society. The result is startling: a profound and hopeful documentary centred on young women and their yearning for connection and an authentic self. “Many movies about the Middle East are about war and terrorism and trauma,” Baghdadi asserts. “Women are always victims, always oppressed. I wanted to reject all that. There are so many beautiful stories about real people just living their life and having hopes and dreams. I wanted to convey that.” SIRENS SCREENS AT SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL, FROM 8-19 JUNE.

PHOTOS BY RITA BAGHDADI, TATIANA EL DAHDAH, DAVINA MARIA

ention “metal” and most people have a rough frame of reference: Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Metallica. Their universality allows for a kind of borderlessness that can see an aging hippie from Oakland, a suburban dad from Kuala Lumpur and a bearded hipster from Sydney all earnestly in the same space, no questions asked. Metal is, after pop music, one of the biggest Western cultural exports to the Global South – from Mumbai to Hanoi to Buenos Aires, it’s usually the first visible underground subculture. And it’s no different in Beirut, where an underground metal scene has existed since the 2000s as a means of resistance against the status quo. But as in many metal spaces around the world, it’s still very much male-dominated: at best, indifferent – at worst, actively hostile – to the presence of women. Enter Slave to Sirens, an all-female Lebanese metal band who, after releasing their debut EP Terminal Leeches in 2018, caught the attention of Moroccan American filmmaker Rita Baghdadi. Being a fan of heavy music, she was drawn to their unsparing presence and explosive sound. “I saw a couple of articles as they were starting to become more visible in the public eye. [They had] giant hair, [were dressed] all in black and were just standing in a forest in Lebanon,” Baghdadi reminisces. She decided to contact the band on Facebook, and from there a friendship with rhythm guitarist Lilas Mayassi grew. They found themselves videochatting for hours on end, talking about “everything in life and really connecting on a personal level”. Collaborating on a documentary seemed a natural next step. After Baghdadi met the rest of the band – vocalist Maya Khairallah, lead guitarist Shery Bechara, bass player Alma Doumani, and drummer Tatyana Boughaba – she was invited to Beirut to stay with Mayassi. “I brought my camera, [and] we were like, ‘Well, let’s just see what happens.’” This trip acted as the catalyst for Sirens, a feature documentary directed and shot by Baghdadi, with Tatiana el-Dahdah as sound producer, which premiered at Sundance earlier this year. Amid a glut of rock documentaries featuring talking heads and the generic “rise to fame” trajectory, what is striking about Sirens is the intimacy that Baghdadi captures between the five young women – particularly the two guitarists – as they navigate a complicated friendship set against Beirut’s fragile political backdrop. “I grew up listening to harder music and was always the only girl in the mosh pit,” says Baghdadi. “I grew up in post-9/11 America, and the images of Arab people on screen [tended to be] negative stereotypes. Making Sirens was my opportunity to contribute a more nuanced perspective of one tiny part of life in the Middle East that people may not have seen,” she explains. “Being able to centre women as main characters with their own agency was really important to me.” Baghdadi’s directorial style draws heavily from cinema vérité – she recalls being inspired by the Maysles brothers (Grey Gardens, 1975) and Frederick Wiseman (In Jackson Heights, 2015) at a young age. In Sirens, conversations never appear stilted, and there is barely any self-consciousness. It is as if we are peeking directly into their lives.

Robert Lukins

Somewhere between a dream and reality, Robert Lukins visits Loveland – and interrogates toxic masculinity during his stay.

by Anna Spargo-Ryan @annaspargoryan

Anna Spargo-Ryan’s memoir, A Kind of Magic, is out in October.

PHOTO BY BREEANA DUNBAR

Books 34

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Into the Badlands

obert Lukins has never set foot in Nebraska, but you wouldn’t know it. His new book, Loveland, is largely set there, and it hums with a deep fondness for this midwestern state and the folklore hiding beneath. “I’ve been fixated on Nebraska since I was a little kid,” he says, “but a slightly unreal Nebraska. When I was about 10, I was going through my parents’ record collection, and I came across the Bruce Springsteen album Nebraska. I hated Bruce Springsteen, but that album cover was so exotic to me.” The opening line of chapter one is, “None of this is real.” It’s a set-up that the book seems to take quite seriously; though it reads as realism, there is an undercurrent of magic and otherworldliness. The reader can never quite be certain that the protagonist May’s experiences are real. That feeling extends to the Nebraska Lukins has created. He was meant to see it in person in March 2020, as part of a travel writing grant, but COVID conspired against the trip. Instead, he pored over vintage roadside guidebooks and his own online research, finding the

Early versions of the novel explored the male characters’ perspectives – their upbringings, family relationships, lives they led – looking for something like an origin for their behaviour. “I wrote this novel again and again,” Lukins says. “I really started to consider my role as the author giving them prominence.” After spending six iterations of the novel with these men, Lukins changed tack. “It was a conscious, punitive act to push these men’s experiences outside of the sphere of the novel. They are completely present in their actions and their culpability. But this is a novel of the experiences of these women and how they exist around these almost immovable objects.” The book that Loveland became is a quiet interrogation of male aggression – why it happens, where it comes from, and who it affects. It doesn’t employ much of the language of violence, for the most part avoiding descriptions of violent acts or cruel conversations. Casey and May are both on the receiving end of heinous male behaviour but the focus always remains on the women’s experiences and how their lives are devastated by men who claim to love them.

The effect is disarming. In lyrical prose, these women face danger with courage. They are victims, but not only victims. The reader is encouraged to consider them with empathy and trust. Lukins says the tone is deliberate. “My number one concern with this was making anything gratuitous. I was so determined that there wasn’t going to be even a moment of titillation for any of this. I didn’t want those bits to thrill.” Maybe the setting is part of what makes it feel that way: it provides an almost conspicuously neutral backdrop on which to paint this story. The reader knows it is this town called Loveland, but it never comes completely into focus. There’s something in that, too, about male violence being everywhere. It is in an old lakeside house in Nebraska. It is in a suburban home in Australia. The insidiousness – the creeping, building threat – could be in your street, next door, your own bedroom. This year, Robert Lukins will get on a plane and finally step foot on the great plains of Nebraska. It’s hard to imagine his visit will make it any more real than the Loveland he has already observed. LOVELAND IS OUT NOW.

small, local details that would bring Nebraska to life. That work becomes a beautifully drawn setting with the same suffocating feeling as that of Lukins’ first novel, The Everlasting Sunday. It’s a slightly off-kilter rendering of the real place – something Lukins has done deliberately. “Any time there was a specific detail, I made sure it was slightly wrong. Every single fact in this novel is just slightly wrong. I needed to reaffirm my idea that this is a place somewhere between a dream and reality.” Loveland is a story about May, an Australian woman whose grandmother, Casey, has died and left behind a previously unknown property in the US. May leaves her abusive husband and angst-ridden teenage son and travels to Nebraska to sell it, along the way discovering dark secrets and the truth about her family. The narrative alternates between now and 1950s America, revealing Casey’s unhappy, violent marriage – one that mirrors her granddaughter’s in the present. “I wanted to interrogate this idea of male control, and is this something that all men carry around, buried within themselves?” says Lukins of the novel. “It always seems to be a mythical thing that’s happening somewhere else – from other men, in other places. But this is us. This is men doing this. I wanted to know: is this a capacity I carry within myself?”

27 MAY 2022

But this is us. This is men doing this. I wanted to know: is this a capacity I carry within myself?

Film Reviews

Aimee Knight Film Editor @siraimeeknight

t doesn’t seem that long since we were last perusing the program for the Sydney Film Festival (SFF), which was postponed twice in 2021, and eventually rolled out last November. This year, SFF returns to its regular spot on the national cinéaste calendar, kicking off on 8 June with the world premiere of We Are Still Here – a genre-defying anthology film by First Nations directors from Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and the South Pacific. Another SFF highlight is the retrospective program It Takes Time: Ten Films by Frederick Wiseman. From his 1967 debut Titicut Follies to 2020’s City Hall, it charts the influential documentarian’s body of work surveying American institutions. The roadshow program will also visit Canberra’s National Film & Sound Archive (12 June-23 Oct) and Melbourne’s ACMI (until 25 Sept). For the budding cinephile, and/or the young-at-heart, SFF also has a familyfriendly program of features and shorts. Vietnamese sci-fi Maika – based on a Slovak-language TV show from the late 70s – stole hearts at Sundance and is set to do the same at SFF. In fact, it’s the perfect follow-up to the silver screen treats on offer at the Children’s International Film Festival, unfurling in Sydney and Melbourne from 28 May-13 June. There, you can introduce your mini movie buffs to Tove Jansson’s comic strip icons in Moominpappa’s Island and Moominvalley: Homecoming, along with Disney defector Don Bluth’s directorial debut The Secret of NIMH, which turns the big 4-oh this year. AK

XXX STILL AND AT THE XXX HERE, SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL

MOTHERING SUNDAY 

In Eva Husson’s adaptation of Graham Swift’s romantic novella, Jane Fairchild (Odessa Young) traces her desire to write, going back to Mothering Sunday – a precursor to Mother’s Day – in 1924. As an orphan born into service, Jane has no family or church to visit on this holy day, and instead goes to see her lover, Paul Sheringham (Josh O’Connor). He’s the only son left between three wealthy families – including Jane’s employers the Nivens (Colin Firth and Olivia Colman) – who lost their sons in the Great War. Before he is due at a luncheon with the families and his fiancée, Paul sneaks a passionate tryst with Jane. The ensuing scenes of Jane wandering the empty Sheringham mansion, nude and bathed in sunlight as she consumes the art, books and food, are a highlight. However, despite the reliable performances and stunning production, the film never really fleshes out its themes of passion and loss, leaving a handsomely made period drama that doesn’t answer its own questions of storytelling in a fulfilling manner. NATALIE NG ABLAZE

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Buried deep within archives, left behind by time, is the remarkable life of Bill Onus, an Indigenous renaissance man and champion of social revolution. Onus’ story is often omitted from Australia’s 20th-century history and the fight for Aboriginal rights. Those who knew the showman as a simple entertainer and boomerang thrower would think Onus was an open and shut case – if not for his nephew, opera singer Tiriki Onus, who found his uncle’s briefcase, unearthing 70-year-old film reels, revealing him as the country’s first Indigenous filmmaker. The many threads of Bill’s life stretch from the Cummeragunja Reserve in Yorta Yorta Country to the neighbourhoods of Fitzroy and the expanse of the Northern Territory, weaving a tale of resistance armed with a movie camera and an eye for what’s right. Each of Onus’ escapades is filled with equally exciting and shocking revelations – touchstone tales fitting of a trailblazer. The discoveries within that briefcase are compelling. A testimony to Onus’ will of fire, still burning bright. BRUCE KOUSSABA

HATCHING 

The monstrous-feminine, and avian, are ready for take-off in this Finnish folk horror parable for puberty. Pre-teen gymnast Tinja (Siiri Solalinna) is the sweetheart of her mother’s (Sophia Heikkilä) Insta-perfect nuclear family, until an errant crow crashes into their living room. An airborne blemish in Mother’s meticulously beige show home, the bird awakens Tinja’s wild side – just as the spectre of her adolescence swoops in. Grotesque, clever and ripe with style, the debut feature from director Hanna Bergholm is a cautionary tale about mummy bloggers, cuckolds and other suburban perversities. It’s the creepy-cute lovechild of ET and Carrie, and yet inventive enough to stand on its own two slippery feet. Occasionally the characters get a hair’s-breadth too close to caricature, but the aggressively girly symbolism, and its critique of gender norms, are eggsellent. The creature effects are a total hoot, further elevated by Solalinna’s fearsome performance, proving that grief really is the thing with feathers. AIMEE KNIGHT

Small Screen Reviews

Claire Cao Small Screens Editor @clairexinwen

CITIZEN SLEEPER  | PC, MAC, SWITCH, XBOX

NOW & THEN

 | STAN

 | APPLE TV+

This slow-burn thriller centres around a strange town that functions as a kind of horrific Hotel California – once travellers have entered, they are physically unable to leave. If that wasn’t bad enough, there’s also the presence of dangerous monsters that roam the streets at night, forcing all residents to hide away in their houses before dark. From its very first episode, generous splatterings of gore make the threat level presented by the monsters abundantly clear. Central to the story is town crier and sheriff Boyd Stevens (a standout Harold Perrineau). It’s his duty to protect the townspeople, which, in a town like this, is a daunting challenge. Perrineau is the most compelling performer in the cast, a sympathetic and intriguing anchor in a series that occasionally veers into the uneven and overcomplicated. Like Perrineau, several of From’s executive producers are also Lost alumni, and comparisons between the two surreal shows are inevitable. What remains to be seen is whether From will live up to such a memorable predecessor. IVANA BREHAS

Yellow puss. Yellow bile. Yellow mucus. A sickly colour palette infuses every frame of this new crime thriller, which captures the nauseating feeling of youthful plans spiralling into chaos. Set in Miami with a diverse Hispanic cast, Now & Then transports its audience between dual timelines. In the past, a graduation celebration between a group of college best friends ends with one of them dead. Twenty years later, a threatening text message brings them all back together. Themes of power and privilege are sensitively portrayed: the lives of rich graduates who get away with their violent acts are juxtaposed with working-class detective Flora (Rosie Perez), whose brother was wrongly convicted of a crime. Boasting a tight script with perfectly balanced tension, the series is also notable for its dizzying cinematography, which cuts from documentary-style beach parties to claustrophobic close-ups of gore and blood. Written by a Spanish-speaking creative team, Now & Then is an unmissable thrill-ride led by Latinx diaspora. NATALIA FIGUEROA BARROSO

ITV have programmed a stand-out collection of Indigenous artistry to coincide with Reconciliation Week (27 May-3 June). The annual First Nations Art Awards 2022 kicks things off, marking the anniversary of the 1967 referendum. Hosted by Karla Grant and Luke Currie-Richardson, the awards recognise innovative creativity and the achievements of First Nations artists. Another highlight is Jon Bell’s The Moogai (2020), a pulsating short that elegantly explores postnatal depression and the trauma of the Stolen Generations. With its expert use of dread‑inducing POV shots, it’s a stellar addition to Australian horror. Lately, genre fans have been spoiled for choice, with streamers increasingly drawn to genre-busting premisses. Following their western oddity Outer Range, Prime Video are releasing another sci-fi series, Night Sky, which follows the bizarre adventures of an old married couple (Sissy Spacek and JK Simmons). Exuding crotchety warmth, the two actors excel at being ordinary – an amusing contrast to the interdimensional portal they’re hiding in their shed. On the other end of the spectrum is the penultimate season of Stranger Things, one of the most expensive TV seasons of all time. The show continues to run on throwback fumes; this time around, it takes cues from A Nightmare on Elm Street (Robert Englund, who played villain Freddy Krueger, features this season). But the nightmarish special effects complement the return to a more intimate focus, as the now high school-aged leads battle the pain and uncertainty of their looming adulthood. CC

27 MAY 2022

FROM

XXX SHARI SEBBENS AS SARAH IN THE MOOGAI

In this story-heavy sci-fi RPG, you play as a “sleeper” – an escaped cyborg worker atop the murmuring ruins of a space station ravaged by collapse and corruption. Though stirred by memories of your corporeal past, your new body is falling apart, subject to “planned obsolescence”. The player is tasked with maintaining its upkeep while traversing a dense network of activities: maintaining friendships, keeping enemies at bay, and unravelling the station’s profound mysteries. This unfolds through the game’s unique cyclical structure, tying your exploration to dice rolls à la digital tabletop games. Rigid management mechanics contrast well with the game’s evocative and cerebral storytelling. The characters, etched like cyberpunk Terry Denton illustrations, contain incredible depth and warmth. Slick, expressive world-building is complemented by a buzzing electronic soundtrack and vivid audioscapes, conjuring a tactile sense of ephemerality in the depths of space. Once you get the hang of it, it’s hard not to be swept up in Citizen Sleeper’s rhythms – when everything comes together, it feels like a revelation. SAMUEL HARRIS

Music Reviews

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t’s been more than three years since the passing of Scott Walker, a truly uncompromising, reclusive genius whose career was full of strange and experimental detours. What never changed, however, was that distinctive, beautiful baritone that grounded his records, no matter how outré his instrumentation went. But this wasn’t always the case. Walker got his start as a member of the successful trio Walker Brothers, who used Phil Spector’s wall of sound to create grand, orchestral pop. But the band fell apart in the late 60s, and Walker went out on his own, producing four great albums that dialled up the opulence and grandeur, melding dramatic orchestral arrangements with Jacques Brel standards and Bergman-referencing original songs. The 1970s were a lull – Walker reunited the Walker Brothers with limited success, and his solo records were critical flops. It wasn’t until 1984’s Climate of Hunter, a dark, brooding record inspired by post-punk and indie music in the UK, that he made a comeback of sorts. The output that followed is incredible, a real testament to his mournful, melodramatic vision. There was Tilt (1995), an album of often eerie, morbid trance-like compositions. On the discomforting The Drift (2006), Walker sang tragic tales about disease, massacres and Elvis Presley. Bish Bosch (2012) was even more of an experimental leap. A few years before his death, he collaborated with drone metal band Sunn O))) and produced the soundtrack for Brady Corbet’s wild pop star film Vox Lux alongside Sia. IT

R ON WALKEILD SIDE THE W

Isabella Trimboli Music Editor @itrimboli

DONATACHI DONATACHI.COM (DELUXE EDITION) 

Since 2017, Sydney producer Donatachi has steadily released a string of hyperpop and bubblegum-pop tracks featuring Mallrat, Slayyyter and Genes, becoming a permanent fixture on Spotify’s hugely influential playlists like Cellophane and hyperpop. The deluxe edition of his second EP, originally released late last year, is a reminder he’s a leader, not an algorithmic follower. While songs like ‘cry’ (a remix of Australian 90s pop-rockers The Mavis’ most famous track) and ‘buttons’ are packed with on-trend sugary Y2K trance, repeat listens reveal a production style and motifs distinct from the likes of hyperpop giants 100 Gecs or AG Cook. The two new tracks show off Donatachi at his best. He gives local acts world-class production: ‘bad 4 me’ lets Sydney singer hearteyes thrash around in a glittery nu-rave, pop-punk cage, while ‘cloud 9’ might be his best song yet. Teaming up with Melbourne duo cookii, Donatachi is all the better with a producer to play with – the dance track continually evolves, becoming as euphoric as its title. JARED RICHARDS

SIGRID HOW TO LET GO

MODAL MELODIES MODAL MELODIES

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Sigrid loosens her grip on second album, How to Let Go. The Norwegian singer made her mark with her debut Sucker Punch (2019), an album teeming with slick electro-pop bangers. While there are plenty of these on How to Let Go, there’s a lighter touch throughout as she explores themes of self-love and empowerment. Sigrid has always been influenced by contemporaries such as Robyn, evident on songs like the anthemic ‘Burning Bridges’, and the pulsating ‘A Driver Saved My Night’. But there are some more downbeat tracks here, such as the piano-led ‘Last to Know’, which gives her controlled vocals space to shine. An unlikely collaboration with British emo band Bring Me Horizon for the track ‘Bad Life’ sees Sigrid leaning into a more mainstream sound. The track, with its uplifting message and generic backing, sounds ready-made for commercial radio or the soundtrack of a teen film. While How to Let Go isn’t as immediate as Sigrid’s previous work, there’s plenty here to admire.

Melbourne’s Violetta Del Conte-Race (Primo!) and Jake Robertson (Alien Nosejob) come together as Modal Melodies, an outsider synth-pop duo balancing deep underground influences with brighter, more accessible touchstones. Much of this debut album is reserved for slow, wonky entries like the opening ‘Occupants’, but there are plenty of perkier moments too. Most upbeat and dance-ready is ‘Standing Still’, combining taut rhythmic pulse, skating synth hooks and synthetic handclaps. Del Conte-Race handles most of the vocal duties with airy detachment, though Robertson joins her to sing lead in ‘Driving’, setting aside his usual punky snideness for a more tempered approach. His effects-laced guitar work on ‘Disco Hotel’ is more subdued than usual, although the song’s over-the-top drum fills nearly steal the show. Everything about this project feels charmingly homemade, from the pop flourishes on ‘Fourth Stage’ to the cover painting, which pokes fun at the rigours of reading sheet music. DOUG WALLEN

GISELLE AU-NHIEN NGUYEN

Book Reviews

Melissa Fulton Deputy Editor @melissajfulton

HAPPY STORIES, MOSTLY NORMAN ERIKSON PASARIBU

SUNBATHING ISOBEL BEECH

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Happy Stories, Mostly is the exciting debut collection of short stories from Indonesian writer Norman Erikson Pasaribu. Each story paints an intimate picture of modern Indonesia: a Muslim woman grieves the death of her estranged gay son; a Catholic nun flees the convent to care for a widower and his sick child; a student searches for a mythical Sumatran giant. The effect is like spinning on an axis. To observe identity from these wildly different vantages is an act of empathy: we’re not asked to judge the homophobic mother – we’re invited to love her. This is particularly moving in the context of Pasaribu’s personal life, being the target of attacks from Indonesian hardliners for the representations of queer life in his work. Longlisted for the International Booker Prize, Pasaribu wields genre easily, shifting from realism to speculative sci-fi to metafiction. Pasaribu’s poetry is what carries us through: the prose is vibrant (artfully translated by Tiffany Tsao), and the narrative structure dreamlike. SAM FLYNN

Isobel Beech’s debut, Sunbathing, is a tender and insightful novel that follows the inner life of a woman experiencing a very particular grief. After several painful, post-funeral weeks she travels to regional Italy to visit friends. Her days consist of gentle household chores, watering plants and eating home-cooked meals. Her days are simple and beautiful, much like Beech’s writing – salads are made with homegrown ingredients, hands are stained from picking mulberries, sunshine pours through open windows. Her inner world is equally beautiful: complex, rich and a place where we spend most of our time. She ponders, she remembers, she agonises over what-ifs. Sunbathing is a remarkable novel that reflects on grief, guilt, female anger and female responsibility. Beech’s prose and ideas are something else: thoughtful and powerful, Sunbathing will fill you up, and make you feel raw and new. DANIELLE BAGNATO

THIS ALL COME BACK NOW MYKAELA SAUNDERS (ED) 

A collection with purpose and power, This All Come Back Now is the first ever anthology of exclusively speculative fiction by Indigenous writers. Twenty-two stories, indelible expressions of sovereignty in language and genre, consider climate, Community, apocalypse, dystopia and post-human futures. In her introduction, editor and contributor Mykaela Saunders frames the anthology as a “mixtape” of First Nations writing, on a continent “post-apocalyptic and not yet post-colonial”. The collection is a reckoning, an examination of the effects of colonial violence, genocide and destruction of Country, conveyed in a gamut of styles, from the hauntingly beautiful – Evelyn Araluen’s ‘Muyum, a Transgression’ and Alexis Wright’s ‘Dust Cycle’ – to the cynical and satiric, like Adam Thompson’s ‘Your Own Aborigine’ and Merryana Salem’s ‘When From’. Some instill a sense of urgency, reflecting our teetering real-world precipice; others abound with something like hope. Masterfully arranged, the anthology creates meaning in addition to its individual parts. DASHA MAIOROVA

EVELYN ARALUEN: STELLAR

27 MAY 2022

ould a universal basic income make life for artists more sustainable? That’s what the Irish government is seeking to determine with its pioneering COVID-recovery pilot program, which offers 2000 eligible artists, chosen at random, to be paid a guaranteed income of €325 per week – the national minimum wage – for three years. They’ll be able to earn additional income too, without the UBI being compromised. Imagine if such a thing existed for Australian artists and writers? In her recent Stella Prize acceptance speech for her debut poetry collection, Bundjalung poet Evelyn Araluen spoke of the devastation COVID has wreaked on Australia’s already structurally inequitable arts industry. “I doubt we’ll ever know how much the arts lost during these last few years,” she said. Despite critical acclaim for Dropbear, Araluen says that at the time of the book’s publication “I was about as broke as I’d ever been”. Indeed, the average author wage in this country is “perilously low”, according to the Australian Society of Authors – with 58 per cent of full-time writers earning less than $15,000 per year, and 25 per cent earning less than $2000. It begs the question: who can afford to be a writer? “I don’t want the dignity and the peace this prize provides to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a handful of the lucky ones,” says Araluen of her $60,000 win. None of us should. MF

Public Service Announcement

by Lorin Clarke @lorinimus

It’s definitely not a good idea to go looking for a moment like that. Those moments happen when you least expect them. What you can do, though, is find a good storyteller in your life. Grandparents are generally quite good at this. A workplace usually has one. Some shopkeepers are excellent at it. Go up and ask a storyteller a question. Watch how it expertly winds into a narrative. Done well, it’s like watching a ball of wool disappear in the hands of a champion knitter on the train. Borrowing someone else’s stories – finding yourself amazed, or appalled, or delighted, or kicking back laughing – is possibly the best way to borrow joy. Humans have been doing it forever. Speaking of people on trains, here’s a little game

my grandmother used to play. She’d look around the carriage and she’d ask herself what people’s hobbies were. What the hardest thing in their life was and whose favourite person they were. What they were probably like when playing cards. If the whole world was just the people in the carriage, who would she befriend based entirely on instinct? I suspect she did this because she was bored out of her mind, but it’s certainly a way of remembering you’re not the only person in the world. You can borrow other people’s perspectives by reading. You can read a book. You can read old emails or text messages or letters. Even if the person you’re loving is someone you’re missing, their words will be somewhere, written down. Or remembered. Other people laughing isn’t just something you get to witness at random moments from people walking down the street. You can literally google it. News readers giggling is a genre I particularly enjoy. People trying to hold it together in the face of giggles. I dare you not to at least smile. It’s not that we have to be happy all the time, of course. That would undermine the entire point of being happy, which is that it’s a lovely, rewarding feeling especially when compared to everything else. So borrow some moments when you can get them, I reckon. Life delivers little things like this all the time. It’s just a matter of catching them in the palm of your hand. Someone playing piano from a few houses down. Strangers walking past deep in conversation about something exciting and wonderful and thrilling to both of them, and quite beyond your own comprehension. Because who cares? They’re excited! Their lives have led to this moment of mutual excitement and support and you walked right past it and maybe it will change the world. Life will offer many moments of joy. Not all of them are yours, but that doesn’t mean you can’t treasure them.

Lorin Clarke is a Melbourne-based writer. The new series of her radio and podcast series, The Fitzroy Diaries, is on ABC Radio National and the ABC Listen app now.

he other day, a woman was walking down the street. You don’t know the woman. Well, you might know the woman, but for the purposes of this story you don’t know the woman because I don’t know the woman. To me, she is just a woman walking down the street. To her, and to her loved ones, I am sure she is much more than that. She is lovely and makes a great pav and sometimes annoys her grown children by telling them the same story for the thousandth time about something they did when they were kids. To people who remember her from years gone by, maybe she is part of a memory that involves stifled giggles in assembly or a stolen kiss in the dark while music plays at a party just metres away. To me, though, she was just a woman, walking down the same street I happened to be walking down at that exact moment in both our lives. The reason this is worthy of reporting is that, as I glanced at this woman, I realised she was remembering something funny. A smile bordering on a chuckle lit up her face. She shook her head slightly, and it seemed she might mutter something aloud to herself, but she caught herself and looked at me, and smiled the polite smile of a stranger, but it still had the joy in it. It still had an echo of remembered laughter and I thought: thank you. Public Service Announcement: we are part of a community. If life isn’t offering much in the way of immediate joy, you can always borrow someone else’s.

27 MAY 2022

Something Borrowed

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Tastes Like Home edited by Anastasia Safioleas

FOOD PHOTO BY ANSON SMART, PORTRAIT BY NIKKI TO

Tastes Like Home XXX O. Tama Carey

Milk Toffee Ingredients Makes 52 squares 200g cashews 2 x 395g tins condensed milk 400g caster sugar

220g butter, diced 5g sweet spice mix Salt flakes

Sweet Spice Mix

Method Preheat the oven to 150°C. For the sweet spice mix, combine all the spices and grind to a fine powder. Set aside 5g and store the remainder in an airtight container. Spread out the cashews on a baking tray and toast for 15-20 minutes until they are uniformly pale golden, giving them a jiggle every 5 minutes to ensure they are cooking evenly. Set aside to cool, then very roughly chop. Line a rectangular cake tin (28cm x 18cm) with baking paper. Place the cashews, condensed milk, sugar, butter and spice mix in a wide-based saucepan and stir over a high heat until melted and combined. A wooden spoon is fine but a heatproof spatula is better. Reduce the heat to low and keep stirring, gently and evenly, as it can catch very easily. It will take about 20 minutes to cook. It’s ready when it darkens and you start to see patches that look a little foamy. Carefully turn out the mix into the prepared tin and spread it out evenly with your spatula, gently pressing it down as you go. Tap the tin firmly on a hard surface a few times to compress the mixture a little and make it easier to cut. Finish with a nice sprinkle of salt flakes and gently press them down with the spatula. Allow to cool to room temperature, then turn out the toffee slab and cut it into 3cm squares. A ruler is a helpful tool here if you want to be precise. You may find that bits crumble off but that’s okay. If it’s too hard and crumbly it can be a sign that you have cooked it a little too much; if it doesn’t set to firm, the mix is slightly undercooked. Milk toffee can be stored at room temperature for up to a month.

O. Tama says…

ost cultures have some form of toffee, fudge or caramel in their repertoire. This recipe is my version of the one found in Sri Lanka – milk toffee, which I learned from my Nan. Milk toffee isn’t one of the sticky ones, it’s a little more fudge-like, with a crumbly texture. Some versions can be quite hard, others a little softer. Cashews are sometimes but not always added, and I add a spice mix and a generous sprinkle of salt in mine. Traditionally milk toffee is made by first slowly reducing milk; however, most modern versions use condensed milk. As a young child, I was a notoriously fussy eater. I didn’t really care for food despite my family on both sides being excited eaters and cooks. They all loved eating and cooking, and endlessly talked about food. Little did I know at the time, this culture of eating would come in handy later in life when I found myself becoming a chef by accident. My dad’s family is Australian and from that side I remember my Nana cooking glorious roast dinners – baked potatoes were one of my favourites – and making her own ice creams, breads and pastry. There were also very fine lemon tarts and delicious cheese scones. My mum’s family is Sri Lankan, and I grew up eating this food too, although less often. Mum would have excellent dinner parties and spend days creating labour‑intensive feasts. My job was frying the pappadums which, like baked potatoes, were always the exception to my fussy-eating rule. My mum’s family all lived in Perth, and I grew up in Adelaide, which meant family visits were rare. But when I did get to go to my Nan’s house there was always a tin of milk toffee. I loved its sweet, crumbling nature, and I would always ask for more. The best thing would be when we would receive a parcel from my Nan in the post: love cake for my mum, another excellent Sri Lankan sweet, and milk toffee for me, a little travel-worn and shaken, but very delicious nonetheless. LANKA FOOD: SERENDIPITY & SPICE BY O. TAMA CAREY IS OUT NOW.

27 MAY 2022

2g cardamom seeds 1g whole clove (go a little under rather than over with this measure if needed)

4g salt flakes 2g white peppercorns 2g star anise 2g cinnamon quill, roughly crushed 2g freshly grated nutmeg

Puzzles By Lingo! by Lee Murray leemurray.id.au HANDKERCHIEF

CLUES 5 letters Fierce maned animals Glenn _, US actress Metal money Small picture inside another Unpleasant sound

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6 letters Life forms from other planets NSW town known as the “beef capital” of Australia Open your ears Shiny Christmas decoration Vast seas 7 letters Conspicuous Cut‑out design Piece, slice or part Put in quarantine Stretchy string or ribbon with rubber strands 8 letters Feet parts that need to be clipped

C O

S N

Sudoku

by websudoku.com

Each column, row and 3 x 3 box must contain all numbers 1 to 9.

E 6

8 9

7 4 6 9 9 5 8 7

7 6 8 9

6 3

1 4 5 1 7 4 9 6

Puzzle by websudoku.com

Solutions CROSSWORD ACROSS 1 Dashiell Hammett 9 Canada 10 Sam Spade 11 Hard-boiled 14 Seen 16 Business hours 20 Industrialist 23 Eyes 25 The Thin Man 29 Accurate 30 Rankle 31 Double standards

Using all nine letters provided, can you answer these clues? Every answer must include the central letter. Plus, which word uses all nine letters?

by puzzler.com

DOWN 2 Avatar 3 Hoard 4 Erato 5 Lysol 6 Armadas 7 Mopes 8 Tweeness 12 Busts 13 Inner 15 Erupt 16 Badge 17 Shaft 18 Haiti 19 Vineyard 21 Titrate 22 Pallid 24 Squab 26 Event 27 Heron 28 Ninja

Word Builder

Handkerchief comes to us from a word we all know, plus a word that’s faded away. Hand means, well, “hand”. Like many other words for basic objects, it’s been pretty much the same since English began. Kerchief is a different story. The Old French couvrechief “a piece of cloth worn on a woman’s head” made its way into Middle English, later losing a syllable. The Middle English curchef broadened to “a piece of cloth worn on anyone’s head”. In the 1400s, we start to see it used for any square of fabric a person might wear…which is where hand comes in. By the mid-1500s, a handekerchefe was carried around and used (in your hand!). Kerchief had mostly disappeared by the 1870s, hanging on for a little while longer as the Scottish curch.

20 QUESTIONS PAGE 9 1 Little Women 2 Sarah Ferguson 3 Thailand 4 Balmain 5 9:30am 6 Carlos Alcaraz Garfia 7 Ho Chi Minh City 8 Joseph Cook 9 Turin 10 Giraffe 11 1992 12 In its head 13 Four 14 Alec Guinness, Ewan McGregor 15 Mental As Anything 16 Sam Kerr 17 A bear 18 Canada 19 A talking horse 20 b) Guadeloupe

Crossword

by Chris Black

Quick Clues

THE ANSWERS FOR THE CRYPTIC AND QUICK CLUES ARE THE SAME.

DOWN

21 22

Cryptic Clues ACROSS

DOWN

1 Author hated slim Hamlet adaptation? (8,7) 9 Country to sack a District Attorney (6) 10 Pass dame struggling with private detective

2 3 4 5 6 7 8

(3,5)

11 Representing Labor, did he become cynical

and tough? (4-6)

14 Noticed seven ditching centre (4) 16 Boss is unsure about touring hotel when work

should be done (8,5)

20 Nudist is dancing outside trial of magnate (13) 23 Looks at broadcast agreements in the navy (4) 25 Rousing anthem about fine work of 1-across

(3,4,3)

29 A cold clergyman is precise (8) 30 Annoy the French after class (6) 31 Do strange blue flags show evidence of bias?

(6,9)

Gardner who acted with sailor in sci-fi blockbuster (6) Nothing in firm’s stockpile (5) Sheraton hosts muse (5) Olly’s new cleaning product (5) Military groups reimagined as drama (7) Broods and rewrites poems (5) Finishes The Maltese Falcon and stews about contrived sentimentality? (8) 12 Breaks statues (5) 13 Victor removed top inside (5) 15 Queen gets up, time to explode! (5) 16 Briefly harass cop with this, usually? (5) 17 Handle private detective (5) 18 Regularly picked hyacinth with me in country (5) 19 Where Red Harvest takes place? (8) 21 Determine concentration, treat it appropriately (7) 22 White hat tails friend (6) 24 Cooked tailless Basque pigeon (5) 26 Happening during seventies (5) 27 Protagonist gets close to stolen bird (5) 28 Concealed by tradition in Japan? (5)

Solutions SUDOKU

WORD BUILDER

27 MAY 2022

2 Embodiment (6) 3 Squirrel away (5) 4 A muse (5) 5 Disinfectant brand (5) 6 Fleets (7) 7 Broods (5) 8 Affected cuteness (8) 12 Wrecks (5) 13 Internal (5) 15 Flare up (5) 16 Symbol of authority (5) 17 Mine passage (5) 18 Caribbean country (5) 19 Winemaking plantation (8) 21 Way to measure in chemistry (7) 22 Washed-out (6) 24 Young pigeon (5) 26 Occasion (5) 27 Bird (5) 28 Covert assassin (5)

5 Lions Close Coins Inset Noise 6 Aliens Casino Listen Tinsel Oceans 7 Salient Stencil Section Isolate Elastic 8 Toenails 9 Coastline

6 9 2 5 4 7 3 1 8

1 7 3 2 8 6 4 9 5

4 8 5 9 3 1 7 2 6

7 6 8 3 1 5 9 4 2

ACROSS

1 US crime writer (8,7) 9 Very large country (6) 10 Fictional private detective (3,5) 11 Type of crime fiction (4-6) 14 Spotted (4) 16 9 to 5, usually (8,5) 20 Tycoon (13) 23 Spots (4) 25 Detective novel (3,4,3) 29 True (8) 30 Irritate (6) 31 Evidence of hypocrisy (6,9)

Puzzle by websudoku.com

2 5 9 8 7 4 1 6 3

3 1 4 6 9 2 5 8 7

8 3 7 4 2 9 6 5 1

9 2 6 1 5 3 8 7 4

5 4 1 7 6 8 2 3 9

Click 1981

Muhammad Ali and unknown man

words by Michael Epis photo by Getty

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uhammad Ali lived life larger than others. Born in segregated Kentucky in 1942, he took up boxing aged 12, inspired by a police officer’s advice when he was aggrieved by the theft of his bicycle. Six years later that same officer talked him into boarding the plane to the Rome Olympics. Ali feared flying – and supposedly wore a parachute all the way to Rome. He came home a hero, an Olympic gold medal to his name – a name he regarded as a “slave name”, even if it was taken from a 19th-century abolitionist, Cassius Clay. He took a new name from the religion he’d embraced, Islam. Four years on he was heavyweight champion of the world – within two years he was hated by millions, lauded by others, for refusing to serve in Vietnam. “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong,” he declared. His celebrity was worldwide for the rest of his life. He travelled everywhere, doing as much good as he could, such as Grammy-nominated album The Adventures of Ali and His Gang vs Mr Tooth Decay. So it was only natural that when Ali’s photographer buddy, Howard Bingham, saw a man threatening to jump from an LA

building, he called Ali, who was on the scene within minutes. Like Batman. Well, news anchor Walter Cronkite thought it was the work of a superhero. The police officer in charge was Sergeant Bruce Hagerty. “We had a team of specialists try to talk him down,” Hagerty later recalled. “Nothing was working. There was a crowd of two or three hundred people on the street. And there’s people in the crowd literally telling the guy to jump. And outta nowhere we seen this guy, this black Rolls-Royce. It pulls up and a guy gets out, says he’s Muhammad Ali’s driver, and would I allow Ali to come up and talk to the man. So I said sure. I’m outta aces, so let’s see where this will go.” Ali went up and talked to the man. “I’m no good. I’m going to jump,” he said. Ali replied, “You’re my brother. I love you.” How could anyone resist? The man relented. But there was one more thing. “I promised the man that he could be taken to the police station in my car,” Ali told Sgt Hagerty. And that’s how Muhammad Ali saved a man’s life then drove him to the police station in his Rolls-Royce.