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TV Week, 15th December, 1990
I think I'm fairly safe in saying that this was the first time I'd ever sat in a TV studio audience and watched as, between scenes, one of the stars of the show cut someone's hair while another strummed guitar and led the community singing. Yes, in fact I'm sure that's never happened to me before.
Paul McDermott, who these days has abandoned his plait for a variation on what used to be called the "basin cut", had rushed off to his dressing room and returned with a pair of clippers. And while a blonde girl in a black T-shirt leaned forward nonchalantly, he proceeded to "improve" on her already short-back-and-sides look.
In the meantime, another section of the audience had joined Richard Fidler in Laugh, Kookaburra, Laugh and Puff the Magic Dragon, with Stairway to Heaven thrown in just for good measure. (Richard doesn't know all the lyrics which says something about HIM).
I'm not sure what Tim Ferguson was doing at that stage - my small brain was having enough trouble coping as it was.
It was a bizarre scene, but, then again, this was the Doug Anthony Allstars in action, at their menacing, intimidating, over-the-top best.
The tone of the evening had been set when the Dougs arrived in the packed ABC studio and took a leaf out of the missal - each person in the audience assembled to watch the taping of the first of the DAAS Kapital series was asked to offer his or her immediate neighbour a sign of peace.
This was followed quickly by the barked command: "Come on, a bit of f...... love and peace!" You get the picture.
A front row fan wearing a green Gucci T-shirt came in for some merciless treatment ("You might middle-class us to death!") and there were some gags, not to be repeated here, about most minority groups.
Yours truly was spotted and referred to once or thrice - "You really should change that photo you know," followed some time later by: "Where's your notebook and pen now Mr F...... Know-it-all?"
"The basic idea," Tim Ferguson told us, "is that you guys are prisoners here..... as we all are on this sickened planet."
By that time, the notebook was well and truly concealed, I can tell you!
The Dougs were on the rampage, doing four shows at once here.
DAAS Kapital has them in a submarine saving the world's most precious art, a noble pursuit complicated by the fact that Tim is turning into a giant cockroach and Richard, having stabbed and eaten parts of his girlfriend, a fish, is violently ill.
Then there's a sub-plot about Paul wanting to avenge the deaths of his maiden aunts, stalwarts of the Cat Protection Society who met their demise at the hands (?) of......... you guessed it, giant cockroaches.
At least I think that's what the TV show is about, but with other characters such as Flacco (Paul Livingston) and tonight show host Bob Downe (Mark Trevorrow) thrown in, who really knows? I can wait until next year to find out.
In the meantime, if you get the chance to see another episode of DAAS Kapital being put together, take it. Between the scenes you'll get another three shows as the inimitable and turbo-charged Messrs McDermott, Ferguson and Fidler do their various collective things. Usually, watching television programs being put together is so much "action, cut, do it again" - then nothing, as the inevitable technical glitches are taken care of - that it's about as riveting as a braille version of the Public Services Act.
That's the nature of the beast, but in three and a half hours in the DAAS studio, the pace didn't let up once.
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