Rally Round the Flag, Boys
Somewhere between 5 and 6am on Tuesday the 6th of December 1988, I and several others then operating under the dubious moniker ‘The D-Generation’ arrived at the South Melbourne studios of Triple-M for what we thought would be just another episode of our ramshackle breakfast show. Waiting for us in the darkened foyer were two besuited gentlemen cradling briefcases and wearing expressions that suggested they weren’t there to contribute to ‘Dag Quiz’ or get the autograph of the bloke who did the voice of ‘Wayne from St Albans’. It was explained to us that before we could go on air, we would be required to sign a document guaranteeing that we would not be making any jokes about, or indeed even referring to, a man (not named) who, earlier that morning, may or may not have been arrested in a public toilet block on the other side of the world. We had no idea who or what they were talking about. A couple of hours later, as Tommy G and myself slid deftly into ‘the new one from Mike and the Mechanics’ and quickly tore off our headphones, the station news director tumbled into the studio and blurted, ‘Have you guys heard? Alan Jones has been done for cottaging!’
‘What the hell is cottaging?’ we said. ‘And more importantly, who’s Alan Jones?’
Even today, visitors from Sydney are often surprised to learn that not only is Alan Jones’ program not heard down here, many people have no idea who he is. Of those who do, most know very little about him beyond the toilet block incident, where he was charged not with ‘cottaging’, but with something memorably referred to on page 191 of Chris Masters’ Jonestown as ‘flag-waving’. Despite his demigod status up north, Alan has very little influence and no visibility in Melbourne. For several years I thought he and John-Michael Howson were the same person. But despite this, many Melbourne video retailers still stock DVDs emblazoned with the label ‘Alan Jones Recommends’. These days Alan is waving the flag for Mr Holland’s Opus.
As someone who a: refuses to watch any film bearing the ‘Kyle & Jackie O Recommends’ sticker and b: waited a full two years to buy The Corrections because I didn’t want a copy with the Oprah Book Club logo on the front, I am baffled as to who the ‘Alan Jones Recommends’ label is supposed to impress. Is someone who finds Clint Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter in a cutout bin at Doncaster Shoppingtown really going to be won over by the imprimatur of a Sydney radio announcer seemingly obsessed with strapping young footballers?
And the choice of titles that have received Alan’s nod leads me to suspect that he hasn’t actually seen all the movies himself. High Plains Drifter, sure; if you don’t accept the possibility that Clint is a ghost, the movie can be read as a right-wing revenge fantasy, with Eastwood meting out the kind of justice Alan’s listeners would probably advocate for everything from arson to double-parking. But Robert Altman’s Buffalo Bill and the Indians? My guess is he saw the words ‘Paul Newman’ and ‘Buffalo Bill’ and said, ‘sure, put it on the list’. This is not your standard ‘oater’ as they say in Variety, but a gruelling satire that suggests a beloved public figure was in fact a coward, buffoon and fraud who rewrote his own history and manipulated his position in the media to accrue power, influence and the love he so desperately needed from his poor deluded public. If this is really a film that ‘Alan Jones Recommends’, then I think we all need to reassess the man.
And perhaps not do what I’ve started doing: I like to carefully remove the ‘Alan Jones Recommends’ sticker, adhere it to a wallet-sized plastic card, return to the store, and reattach it to the cover of Can’t Stop the Music. Or, if I can be bothered slipping into a Club X, to some hardcore gay porn. Sure, it’s the kind of act my mother would describe as ‘juvenile’, but you can’t tell me someone isn’t going to laugh when they see Alan’s face smiling back at them from a packet of butt-plugs.
Tony Martin is the Melbourne-based author of ‘A Nest of Occasionals’ and ‘Lolly Scramble’. Podcasts of his radio show ‘Get This’ are still available for free download at iTunes (type in: ‘Get This: Richard Marsland Lives’). Click here to see an extended version of his video shops report from ‘The 7PM Project’.
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