The Best Australian Humorous Writing Read online

  JULIA ZEMIRO

  Idle hands make for short nails

  Father’s Day, 1982. Year 8. I won’t see dad ’til Sunday morning. He’s at the restaurant, cooking, sweating, feeding 60 people a night. I will wake him Sunday with my gift, an Ella Fitzgerald cassette tape.

  But it will be a little awkward. I have been caught shoplifting during the week and dread having to wish him a happy “father of a juvenile delinquent” day.

  Of all the weekends Father’s Day—how humiliating. I am not afraid of what my dad will do, but what he will think. And what did I steal? False nails, of all things. This will be excruciating. He has fired waitresses for having false nails. Women who tried to balance three plates of food with long, painted claws.

  Idle hands he calls them. Just seeing those talons dipping in the soup or a seafood casserole is enough to make you scream.

  Well, your daughter is a criminal with idle hands that got busy nicking stuff. I also stole a packet of chocolate chews. I am tubby enough as it is. No need to gild the lily there.

  1982. A time when shop security was, well, non-existent. I am actually a kid who chooses to stay away from trouble. Never expected to get caught but that 65-year-old shop detective nabbed me good. I thought she was an old granny. Talk about your undercover.

  Sunday morning comes. Up at dawn, I watch Thunderbirds and Gene Autry the singing cowboy, make Milo, put on my roller skates and flail about the back lane ’til it’s time to wake dad.

  Roller skates still on, I walk up the stairs using the rubber stopper at the front to balance myself. Carrying a breakfast tray with a mug of real coffee, milk and two sugars, two pieces of toast and a beautifully wrapped Ella Fitzgerald cassette, I quietly open the door. I have always loved waking my dad with breakfast. I am a food and drink alarm. As soon as I wake him, and say “Bonjour, papa”, I burst into tears. Somehow he knows. My stepmum has worded him up.

  He gives me that look you hope a parent will always have for you: “You done wrong but I love you anyway.”

  I blubber my excuses: I have never shoplifted before, it was my first time, I’m sorry: that kind of thing. And I’m not bunging it on. The shame I feel is real. But of course I have shoplifted before. Mainly nail polish, lipgloss and lollies.

  Then dad does that thing you wish parents wouldn’t do: he gives me a parallel story of his own stealing escapades.

  1946. France. Dad is eight. He steals apples from a next door neighbour’s tree and is chased off the property by a farmer, his gun and a dog.

  I don’t feel better. He and his friends were stealing because they were hungry. I, the tubby teenager, stole so that I may have beautifully long fake nails for a school dance to attract a boy. Highly unlikely, but one lives in hope.

  Dad loves his cassette and the coffee’s good and strong. I am a chef’s daughter, after all. Correct measurements are in my blood.

  Dad talks me through the “stealing is bad” speech. And the fake nails? Don’t get me started on the idle hands song and dance that followed. But he sees my remorse. Later, he will take photos of me roller-skating in my leg warmers.

  The next day, mum has to do the hard yards as we front up to the department store’s manager, Mr Pyke. We are there to plead my stupidity. Mum does her best “I’m a teacher, I understand teenagers” speech. She assures him I will be grounded.

  But Mr Pyke isn’t satisfied. He wants more. Tarring and feathering, maybe? Mum adds more punishments that she can dole out. And he’s still not convinced. What’s he after?

  Then it clicks. My mum the genius gets his drift: “And I can assure you that when her father sees her, she will be severely dealt with.” And we are free. She has said the magic word—father. For Mr Pyke, dad means punishment.

  Odd. I thought dad meant love. And short, clean nails.

  DAME EDNA EVERAGE

  My loyal subjects and possums! A seasonal message from President Edna

  Like most refined young women of my generation, I was brought up with a beautiful picture of the little princesses on the wall of my Moonee Ponds boudoir. Admittedly, it was just a colour page torn from the Australian Women’s Weekly and in those days it wasn’t as beautifully printed as it is now, so that the colours were a bit smudgy and overlappy. However, it was a gorgeous study of the young soon-to-be-Queen Elizabeth, even though she had about three pretty, smiling mouths running up her cheek like flying ducks on the wall. Whenever the newspapers wrote about Lilibet, they always described her as “radiant”, which worried me because I thought it meant radioactive. They also always said she was “smiling happily” too, as though there were any other way of smiling, for heaven’s sake!

  She was my childhood inspiration and I little dreamt we would become close friends and find ourselves, nearly half a century later, in the kitchen of Buckingham Palace dunking bickies in our tea and sharing intimate secrets like Carrie Bradshaw and Samantha in Sex and the City. No prizes for guessing which one of us is Samantha!

  The recent Australian elections have got her very excited. “Will little Mr Rudd really turn Australia into a republic?” she asked me this morning with a quiver in her voice. “Pray God, let it be true and I won’t have to go on any more of those boring official visits and be groped by your rough-hewn prime ministers or shake hands with those little botoxed Sydney socialites wearing too much gold.”

  I reassured my friend the Monarch that it was almost certain that the Dentist (as I affectionately call Mr Rudd) would certainly have the republic high on his agenda. “He’s not called Kevin for nothing,” I added, and we dissolved into peals of laughter, which even woke the corgis under the table and might also have disturbed grumpy old Phil.

  When I was last in Australia giving private and confidential elocution, etiquette and deportment lessons to Julia Gillard, she hinted pretty broadly that I was their first choice for president. “Let’s face it Edna,” she said in her distinctive drawl, “you are impartial, globally respected, beautifully spoken and yet politically to the left of Genghis Khan. Who, apart from me, has better qualifications for the job?”

  Julia then went on to quiz me about my royal friends, about Camilla and Fergie and Wills and Princess Michael of Kent and naughty little Harry, with the eagerness of a star-struck schoolgirl. It was a far cry from her public image and I am proud to reveal an unexpected, private side of this formidable little minx.

  I’m spending Christmas in Australia this year. First, a visit to the cemetery to buff up my late husband Norm’s obelisk. Horrible, dysfunctional vandals from broken homes have scribbled on the Everage mausoleum with their spray-cans in that ghastly chubby writing that seems to be universal. There are uncalled-for words like “expatriate Edna go home” and yuckier epithets, impugning my stance on Iraq, the hostages, discrimination against same-sex marriage in Aboriginal women’s prisons and female circumcision in Sydney’s southern suburbs.

  On Christmas Day, I’ll be visiting my daughter Valmai in her correctional facility, which I am dreading. Half an hour staring at the fruit of my womb through a wire-mesh screen, trying not to look at the tattoos on her knuckles. Those little dimpled knuckles that once reached up to me from her bassinette. Christmas dinner will be spent with my son Kenny and his room-mate Clifford Smail, who are both overjoyed by the new government. Cliff is secretary of his local branch of the Window Dressers’ Union and he is very grateful to Mr Rudd for giving him back his clout and credibility. He’s always wanted the option to pull the plug on Myer’s Christmas windows if the in-store Santa continues to be selected according to outmoded gender stereotypes. He wants to nominate his sister, Zena, who is already blessed with ruddy cheeks (no pun intended) and a naturally downy countenance.

  To all my subjects, a Merry Christmas and a joyous heart always,

  Dame Edna

  Politics

  KAZ COOKE

  Phwoarr, check out the policies on Julia Gillard

  Julia Gillard, it’s said, has four strikes against her as a possible leader of the
ALP. Never mind that only three strikes will see you off the field in baseball, a strategic game made extra fun by sneaking to the next base, secret signals and, in my case, sleeping with the coach. But I digress.

  I don’t know what the ALP brains trust, which by now must be four blokes and an urn, is thinking. Surely they can’t have many members or much more than $2.50 left. And Kim Beazley has about as much chance of being elected prime minister as an iceberg lettuce.

  Last time I voted in a federal election, I was so thrilled there was an alternative candidate to the ALP and the Liberals in my electorate I tried to vote for her twice. Anything to avoid going for the mob who took away poor people’s right to have decent teeth, or for the ones who let them get away with it.

  Telling the Labor Party faction-fanciers that Beazley can’t win seems about as effective as a lecture on manners and common decency from Senator Bill Heffernan. Under Beazley, the ALP is like an elderly labrador. While the Government is taking away so many workers’ rights it makes you wonder when oxygen will be listed as a perk, the labrador opens one eye and farts like a sigh, its paws twitching in dreamlike reverie.

  Sorry, where was I? Four strikes against Julia Gillard. She’s a Victorian, she’s from the left of the party, she’s a woman, and she doesn’t have a husband and kids.

  Imagine if she did have a husband and kids—they’d be hounded by the media while she was accused of neglecting her family to do her job. Not like all those absent fathers in Parliament who couldn’t tell you their kids’ favourite colours, the drama teacher’s name or what their offspring had for tea last night.

  While being a man in Parliament is apparently a get-out-of-town-free card for buggering off and poncing about sounding important while their wives get on with the sticky and exhausting end of bringing up children, apparently it’s somehow compulsory for women in Parliament to have kids.

  I don’t know whether Miss Gillard knows one end of a bub from the other, and I don’t care, although I bet she’s quite experienced with tantrums. I like her joke that she can’t remember what colour her real hair is because she’s been dyeing it so long. Lots of women will relate to that.

  Brace yourself for the thinly veiled accusations that Gillard is frigid, or slutty, or bats for the other team. It’s got to be one of the three, doesn’t it? Or, phwoarr, all of ’em!

  Kim Beazley won’t admit he’s a dirigible that’s snapped its moorings, full of warm air, pootling across the sky in increasingly elliptical parabolas of pointlessness. And if the ALP seriously can’t consider a new leader because he’s not from Sydney and he believes in slightly more social justice than Donald Trump and he’s a she, then they may as well tie themselves in a hessian sack and throw themselves in the Yarra right now.

  I don’t know much about Kevin Rudd, but he seems rather across the AWB business, and, frankly, somebody’s got to be. He’s keeping his head down and travels with his own testicles, so there’s much more chance of him suddenly strolling into the lead position, like that gold medal–winning Olympic skater did when everyone else in the race fell over.

  Please, Australian Labor Party, the country is begging you. Get a new leader. Choose Rudd or Gillard, or a compromise—Molly Meldrum’s a bloke with a girly name. Let the new leader pick their own team regardless of which stupid faction they belong to, then make like a rottweiler and go after that smirkfest they call the Liberal Party.

  For God’s sake, Tony Abbott’s in charge of women’s health. Somebody, do something.

  GUY RUNDLE

  The right wing

  Hidden in the NBC archives is a lost episode of the hit series The West Wing.

  Scene one

  Late at night in the Lodge, the Prime Minister’s advisers gather.

  ADVISER 1: Two weeks after the invasion of the Northern Territory and we’re still flatlining. We invaded Afghanistan—score. We invaded Iraq—gold. The Solomons, Timor and in six weeks Iran—all great material. We invade our own country—and nothing. These polls are dead.

  ADVISER 2: What does Newspoll say?

  ADVISER 1: Don’t know. Don’t read much fiction.

  ADVISER 3: We’ve got to do something or we’re cactus. We need entirely new ideas; an entirely fresh team. We need a bunch of political geniuses the likes of which we’ve never experienced.

  ADVISER 2: Now you’re talking fiction.

  ADVISER 3: You speak truer than you know.

  There is a blinding flash of highly theatrical light and smoke and when it clears some of the advisers from The West Wing—Sam, Josh, Toby and Leo—are revealed, dazed and confused.

  TOBY: Vertigo. I’ve got vertigo.

  JOSH: You’re getting vertigo?

  TOBY: I said I’ve got vertigo from the shazam whatchammacallit meshuggenah.

  LEO: People …

  JOSH: Sam, Toby’s got vertigo.

  LEO: People.

  SAM: You’ve got vertigo?

  West Wing adviser CJ enters, dazed, from another room.

  CJ: Hey, has anyone else got vertigo?

  TOBY (shouting): Yes, I’ve got vertigo.

  CJ: OK, you’ve got vertigo.

  LEO: People, can we forget the vertigo?

  JOSH: Easy for you, you don’t have vertigo.

  LEO: Is everyone all right?

  JOSH: Yeah, as far as I can tell our dialogue style remains unaffected.

  SAM: Where the hell are we—looks like the early 1950s.

  ADVISER 1: Welcome to Canberra. I’m senior political adviser to John Howard and at phenomenal expense to the management we’ve acquired your services for the duration of the election campaign.

  JOSH: Canberra? We’re in Canberra?

  SAM: Canberra we’re in.

  LEO: We’re in Canberra?

  CJ: What’s a Canberra?

  TOBY: Apparently, what we’re in—Canberra.

  ADVISER 2: Yes, um, do you always do that—only the election’s in three or four months and we’d quite like to crack on.

  ADVISER 3: Yes, we all admired the way you turned around Jed Bartlet’s re-election campaign through an application of stern principle and an appeal to the best that is in the population and we’d like you to help John Howard win an election exactly in that fashion, except in reverse.

  TOBY: Win their election.

  SAM: Their election they …

  ADVISER 1: Please, really don’t start.

  LEO: You do understand that we’re … fictional? I mean, we’re Democrats but we’re not real people.

  ADVISER 2: Yes, just like our Democrats.

  LEO: Gee, I don’t know.

  SAM: I don’t know either.

  TOBY: Know? Who knows?

  ADVISER 1: Christ, I wonder if this was a good idea.

  ADVISER 2: The PM’s coming.

  John Howard enters. Despite the fact that it is 10.10am, he is wearing a burgundy patterned dressing gown and bearing a cup of Horlicks. He makes his way to an old Genoa armchair in the centre of the room.

  PM: Well good morning and how is everybody this morning nice sort of weather we’re having isn’t it a nice sort of weather I said to Janette that’s the wife I said to Janette this morning nice sort of weather we’re having this morning and she said yes it would be if it doesn’t rain but I said it’d be good for the farmers and the hydrangeas of course and she said John is that a statement of policy and I said what about the hydrangeas and she said no about the farmers and I said yes I suppose it is and she said well if it is going to rain I better get your spencers off the Hills hoist and I said yes you better had because you don’t want your spencer re-wetted after it’s been dried it’ll give it that sort of yellowish tinge which is a shame because a good spencer can last you a lifetime and really there’s nothing worse than a damp spencer. Mind you there’s nothing better than a dry spencer. Have I mentioned that we’re occupying North Queensland next week? Actually who are these people?

  ADVISER 1: Um, Prime Minister, these are the new team of advisers we hope will
win us the election.

  PM: Really? Why are their mouths hanging open?

  ADVISER 2: They’re just amazed at the opportunity they’ve been presented with.

  PM: New advisers, hey? Do you think they understand Australian culture?

  ADVISER 3: Well, they come from American television, so they sort of are Australian culture.

  PM: Well, um, wonderful to have you aboard. I’ve got to go and have a snooze before my nap. Could someone draft up a regulation confining Aborigines to the cattle stations they work on? I’ll see you all later. Do help yourself to Horlicks. It feeds night starvation, you know.

  And he is gone.

  ADVISER 1: Well?

  LEO: Gee, I don’t know.

  TOBY: Know? What’s to know.

  ADVISER 2: Sorry, what’s the problem?

  CJ: It’s just that we’ve never met anyone who’s more tediously repetitive than we are.

  Josh calls from a corner.

  JOSH: Hey everyone, it’s all right—I was just reading this Fairfax newspaper and in between the sex blog and the guide to the best Tex-Mex cuisine in Phuket there was this actual news story. We can work with this guy.

  ALL: Really.

  JOSH: Yeah, he’s one of us—he’s a liberal.

  Scene two

  The White House. The Oval Office. President Bartlet is writing on a card.

  PRESIDENT: Res ipsa loquitor mens rea ars longa vita brevis. Do you think that’s enough, Charlie?

  CHARLIE: For an eight-year-old girl with leukaemia, more than enough, Mr President.

  PRESIDENT: You know what’s funny, Charlie?

  CHARLIE: That this show is written by Hollywood liberals yet the only regular black character is a 21st-century Step’n’ Fetchit?

  PRESIDENT: No, it’s that, well, let me put it the way I did to the Swedish academy when I won my Nobel.