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Mode, 1993. By Sue Williams
All Star Quality Tim Ferguson seems to have it all: good looks, intelligence, a dazzling wit and he's an outspoken feminist. Can it be long before he goes from fringe cult hero to national heart-throb?
It's not hard working out the who's who of the Doug Anthony Allstars, Wendy Harmer once patiently explained. Paul's the one you screw. Tim's the one you think of when you're screwing Paul. And Richard's the one you end up marrying. By anyone's reckoning that leaves Tim Ferguson, self-confessed bimbo, self-declared feminist an the self anointed prettiest one of them all, the object of no small deal of desire.
After all, Paul McDermott, the bundle of naked aggression who once stepped offstage to cut a member of the audience's hair, is a little too 'in yer face' for many. Richard Fidler is rather too nerdy. And Tim, well he's sweet and sensitive and reconstructed . . .
'Oh don't be fooled by all that, ' roars comedian Jean Kittson. 'He may seem neat and nice and punctual, but he's extremely subversive. He says he's a feminist, but not so long ago he gave my daughter a doll with heart-shaped breasts that opened to reveal a mirror underneath so you can look at yourself. He wouldn't give that to his own children, yet now my two-and-a-half-year-old daughter is obsessed with Barbie dolls, and has Barbie shoes, a Barbie couch, a Barbie wardrobe and all she wants in life is to grow long blonde hair and big breasts.
'She has a Ken doll now as well, ' adds Kittson. 'She calls him Tim.' Ferguson pulls a face and does up another button of his black jacket over his black jumper and his black jeans, almost disappearing into his black chair in the interim. He may not be all things to all people but, by God he tries. It's just that every now and then he's simply misunderstood.
By the man, for instance who strode up on stage and ripped the piece of paper he was holding out of his hands and told him the part of his act where he bemoans his fate trapped in a man's body was a disgrace. Or the woman who started screaming, 'No!No!No!' with her hands clapped firmly over her ears when he delivered another ode to womankind. Or the rough club audience in Britain who assumed he was another ocker bloke who hated females and thought his tongue-in-cheek act was for real - and gave him some of the warmest applause he'd ever received.
'Oh, it's all in food fun,' says Ferguson airily, waving his hands as if to dismiss the poor souls who fail to appreciate his humour. 'I've taken this role as a bimbo whish means that you can explore heavily ambiguous politics to great effect as I pound my fist about feminism. There's nothing funnier than seeing an audience thoroughly confused.
'It's especially effective in Britain. There they take their politics very seriously because they have to - 30 per cent of them these days live below the European poverty line. So we come on stage, and they assume the worst: that we're beer-swilling, violent, misogynist bigots. So it's good fun to pretend to be those things, then subvert their expectations at the same time. It turns racism and sexism on their heads and makes the audience suddenly start questioning themselves. You're a step ahead of them all the time.'
The Allstars certainly have caused a stir in Britain where the second series of their late-night TV show, with celebrity guests like Tom Jones, Eartha Kitt and Sandra Bernhard, is in repeats. Now on a four-month tour of Australia, the group's continued success looks under threat from the number of offers the 29-year-old Ferguson has received to work solo. He's still reviewing his options.
'He's such an extraordinarily talented and quite remarkable person, he could do anything he wanted to,' says Ted Robinson, the ABC's head of light entertainment. 'He's always had an interest in acting, he could have made a living as a pianist if he'd wanted to. For someone thought to be such an iconoclast, he's one of the most gentlemanly people I've ever had the pleasure to deal with.'
Praise indeed for the former Australian National University arts student, son of the executive producer of the ground-breaking current affairs show This Day Tonight , who started his career busking in the streets of Canberra.
Richard Fidler remembers their first encounter well. He was sitting on the pavement playing his guitar when Ferguson turned up swathed in his trademark orange hippie blanket. He started dancing wildly - and the pair were showered with coins.
'He turned up like this extraordinary vision before me,' remembers Fidler. 'He had finger cymbals and he started singing and dancing madly in front of me. he had on this silly orange robe that gave the crowd a good view of his manhood to admire. Because of all the money we made, in a purely cynical gesture I said, 'Let's work together'.'
Teaming up with McDermott, the three shared a house, did the pubs and clubs of Canberra, won the top award at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, appeared as regular guests on the ABC's The Big Gig, were given their own show, DAAS Kapital, by the same network, and built a strong touring following in Britain.
Ferguson started attracting his own individual publicity in 1990 when he stood as a Independent Glamour candidate in the Melbourne seat of Kooyong against the former Liberal Party leader, the 'Gucci Kid ' himself, Andrew Peacock. He won few votes for his policies but amassed an astonishing amount of publicity for his wit and cheekbones.
He has since been on the ABC's World Series Debating and TVTV. These have lead to his sudden emergence as a smart, funny, pretty boy in his own right, combining brains and beauty.
And it's given him a platform to promote wide-ranging debate on the future of feminism - an issue, he says, too many women shy away from discussing. It's time that women stood up and were counted as ... er ... women.
'I think women are great and funnier and usually make much more sense than men,' says Ferguson, married with two children aged five and one. 'Men tend to shoot from the hip with their ideas. Women will think of something first.
'Australia is the most advanced state in the world as regards feminism, no question about it. Sure, we have a whole bunch of guys who like going out and getting pissed and watching football, but they're being joined by a hell of a lot more women. They're the ones [the women] in control.
'Most men believe women are deserving of equal opportunities. The ocker is a figment of John Singleton's imagination in order to sell more beer. Australian men these days are sitting down on a Tuesday night and watching Denton and eating pasta.'
For Ferguson, the real joy of his act lies in challenging the assumptions that all men are bastards, in the same way he once considered producing a T-shirt, 'All Girls Are Bitches'. He admires Camille Paglia for having the courage to question certain axioms dear to most feminists' hearts and despairs of the hallowed orthodoxy of Naomi Wolf.
'A friend of mine went to dinner with Naomi Wolf when she was over here, looked across the bonnet and said, 'Do I look okay?' Lady I've got a book you should read! Even if Paglia is totally wrong, such debate is healthy for feminism.
'There was a survey done recently which showed 21 percent of girls aged between 16 and 25 said they weren't 'feminists' but said they believed men and women were equal. The word for them had such bad connotations of radicalism and bra-burning and lesbian separatism. I find that so sad. But of course I'm still 100 per cent man. You can check by looking in my undies if you want.'
There is certainly little doubt that Ferguson's man enough for almost anyone of anything. He was the one, after all, when a stunt with explosives on The Big Gig went dramatically wrong and left Fidler on a stretcher with members of the audience fainting all over the place, who snapped at a swaying onlooker as the blood ran free, 'Don't be silly, it's only a flesh wound'.
And he was the try hard who took his jacket off with flourish and laid it on the ground as Wendy Harmer was about to step in a puddle - only to splash her head to toe in mud.
'He's really a complete pussycat,' says Harmer. 'When The Big Gig was on, he'd stick around the rehearsals and watch and laugh and when I had a new frock on, he'd say, 'Don't you look great!'
'Mind you,' she adds, 'he is pretty much a party animal too. He's a very exuberant kind of chap, but a lovely man.'
Kittson rolls her eyes. 'Yes, he's wonderful, but I'm not so sure about him being a sensitive New Age reconstructed male,' she says. ' He certainly tries to be, but there are all these base macho qualities lurking underneath. He's more like a big Airedale who comes up and tries to defend you - but knocks over your prized vase with his tail at the same time.'
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