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MICHAEL VEITCH AS STATION MANAGER JACK PIPER |
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In his early 40s, Jack Piper has spent a few too many years in the executive chair which have left him a bit tired round the edges.
Jack’s an old-fashioned radioman. He was straight out of school and into the mailroom of his local radio station, making coffee for Jack Davies, hailing cabs for Roy Rene and running errands for Basil Hannigan. Jack grew up in radio, rising through the ranks of the sound effects department, newsroom, scheduling and eventually his first job as producer on Basil’s new show.
After his divorce, Jack has met Mist, an early-20s, new-age girl. Mist helps Jack keep the balance when dealing with CHAT-AM’s new owners and the prospect of moving newcomer Barry Gold to the breakfast slot to replace his mentor, Basil Hannigan!
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"Jack is one of the most likeable characters that I’ve played but that doesn’t mean he’s a nice guy all the time. He’s likeable in that he’s interesting . He’s one of these guys that could have done a lot better for himself than where he’s ended up. He’s over paying his dues and he wasn’t looking out for himself back in the old days. He’s kind of got himself stuck because of his loyalties to people, which I think is a very nice quality, but it sort of kept him on the wrong side of a certain threshold that could have seen him go on to bigger and better things. Now he’s stuck in this dying radio station with mad people and he has had to ask himself some difficult questions about his life."
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MICHAEL TALKS ABOUT THE 80s |
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"This is like reliving my past! I actually worked in radio during the 1980s. I was there! (Veitch was part of the D Generation on Melbourne radio).
SHOCK JOCK for me brings back all those 80s radio station politics, insecurities and the tragic fashion that dominated the whole decade. There seemed to be almost a total inability for people to actually grasp what they were doing. That’s what radio does. You come into an office and you do your shtick. You don’t realise what effect you have on the outside world. People in places you’ve never heard of or would never go to, consider you part of their lives. You’re oblivious when you’re doing it but it has a strange sort of imploding effect in that you become really overly sensitive about your own particular little territory and it’s always a matter of staking out what’s yours and what’s to be had.
So much of the energy of people who work in radio goes into just that, carving out their particular niche. There was all that confidence of the 80s with FM being new and radio had a tremendous revival during this mad decade. I actually worked at the first commercial FM station in Melbourne. I remember the changeover party between EON and MMM which was total chaos and absolute madness. The real life characters in some ways were a lot more extreme than what we’re doing in SHOCK JOCK!"
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MICHAEL VEITCH - MINI BIOGRAPHY |
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Television credits include D-Generation, Fast Forward, World’s Weirdest TV, Bligh, The Making of Nothing, A Royal Commission into the Australian Economy (telemovie), Blue Heelers, Mercury, L’ill Elvis (animated), Natures’ Gamblers (narrator), Get a Life, IMT, Ocean Girl, Driven Crazy, and The Big News.
His theatre work includes A Royal Commission into the Australian Economy, The Dutch Courtesan, Much Ado about Nothing, Countdown the Musical and The Complete Millennium Musical. Film roles are Garbo, Lucky Break, Brilliant Lies and Magic Pudding. Veitch also worked in radio with D-Generation, FOX FM Breakfast, TT-FM Breakfast and ABC 3L0 mornings.
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