After leaving the CFU, Weir made his first major independent film, the short feature Homesdale ( 1971 ), an offbeat black comedy which co-starred rising young actress Kate Fitzpatrick and musician and comedian Grahame Bond, who came to fame in 1972 as the star of The Aunty Jack Show ; Weir also played a small role, but this was to be his last significant screen appearance.

The ABC has made a significant contribution to television drama with popular series like Brides of Christ, and to comedy with the 1970s hits Aunty Jack and The Norman Gunston Show and more recently Roy & HG, Kath & Kim and The Chaser's War On Everything.

Although the recent closure of ABC Sydney's Gore Hill studios uncovered considerable quantities of film and video footage long thought to have been lost ( e. g. the complete The Aunty Jack Show ), the absence of any reference on the TARA or NFSA databases and the paucity of citations elsewhere ( e. g. IMDb ) suggest that the master recordings of these programs may no longer exist.

Dapto was once, during an episode of the ABC TV show The Aunty Jack Show, part of a parody of the nearby city of Wollongong.

Comedy series have included The Aunty Jack Show, The Paul Hogan Show, The Norman Gunston Show, and more recently The D-Generation, Frontline, The Glass House, Summer Heights High and popular series Thank God You're Here, which has since been adapted to a number of countries around the world, and already several of them have brought in creators and stars of shows like Kath & Kim to help produce, direct, star, or serve as consultants on their versions.

It was produced and broadcast by the ABC in the late 1980s and early 1990s and was produced and directed by Ted Robinson, who started his career as the director of the second series of the acclaimed The Aunty Jack Show in the early 1970s and Neil Wilson who has worked for more than a decade throughout Asia and recently was consultant Producer and Director of Dancing with the Stars in Mumbai, India.

The Gunston character was originally conceived by comedy writer Wendy Skelcher and first appeared as a minor character in the second series of the cult Australian TV comedy series The Aunty Jack Show in 1973.

The Gunston character made enough of an impression for him to be revived in a subsequent comedy mini-series made by the Aunty Jack team, Wollongong the Brave ( 1974 ), in which he starred in a satirical mock documentary Norman Gunston: The Golden Weeks.

His segments as Norman in What's On In Wollongong became one of the most popular parts of the Aunty Jack Show, and Norman appeared on the Aunty Jack Sings Wollongong album along with McDonald's other character, Kid Eager.

* 1973 The Aunty Jack Show ( ABC TV – six B / W episodes ).

The Aunty Jack Show was a Logie Award – winning Australian television comedy series that ran from 1972 to 1973.

The lead character, Aunty Jack was a unique comic creation — an obese, moustachioed, gravel-voiced transvestite, part trucker and part pantomime dame — who habitually solved any problem by knocking people unconscious or threatening to ' rip their bloody arms off '.

Aunty Jack was created for a proposed ABC Radio children's radio series, " The Aunty Jack Show ", commissioned by Paddy Conroy, former head of ABC TV now cable channel manager, which was intended to replace the long-running children's radio series The Argonauts, which was about to be cancelled.

The new series never went to air because ABC executives felt that the Aunty Jack character and some of Grahame's songs were " inappropriate " for young listeners.

Although frequently compared to Monty Python's Flying Circus, the Aunty Jack character in fact made her appearance well before Python was screened in Australia, although the two teams evidently shared the same love of surreal humour.

He had been part of the university revues they had done together in the 1960s, and had a small part in Homesdale, but by his own account he gave up performing just before The Aunty Jack Show.

Maurice Murphy was a pivotal figure in this fertile era of Australian television comedy — he oversaw Aunty Jack and its various spin-off series, and also acted as a vital buffer between the Aunty Jack creative team and the ABC's conservative management.

Among Timmy's team of helpers were Chris Evans known as ' Nobby Nolevel ', Andy Bird who played the pirate radio character ' Radio Diggle ', Karen Walsh was the original ' Aunty Boney kneecaps ', Brian Cox made jingles, friends Sally Mais and Anna Laurie were the cleaners, and many others were regulars on the programme.

Some viewers found it too confronting, and according to Murphy, the ABC received hundreds of calls after the first episode, complaining about the violence, the " bad language " and especially about the drag aspect of the Aunty Jack character.

His main role was as Aunty Jack's new sidekick, the cheeky, gum-chewing, freckle-faced Kid Eager, but in one episode McDonald premiered a new character, devised by staff writer Wendy Heather.

This character featured only briefly in Aunty Jack, but became much more prominent in the spin-off special Wollongong the Brave and went on to become one of the most popular comedy characters in the history of Australian television — the now-legendary Wollongong media ' un-personality ' Norman Gunston.

The Gunston character also appeared on the Aunty Jack Sings Wollongong LP and starred in his own hugely successful, Logie-winning Tonight Show parody, The Norman Gunston Show, which premiered in 1975.

It was while working on The Aunty Jack Show in 1973, that McDonald first performed the character for which he would become best-known, the gauche and inept local regional TV personality, Norman Gunston.

From 1997, Brilliant TV made three series of Timmy Towers for CITV, starring Mark Speight as the Abominable No Man, Rodger Bremble as Aunty Boney knees, and Alex Lovell as the delightful Miss Thing.

In the U. K. Marvel story " Raiders of the last Ark ", Aunty reawoke and made her single most major role in the series.

has been made into a film starring Jim Broadbent as Morrison's father, Juliet Stevenson as his mother, Gina McKee as his wife, Sarah Lancashire as Aunty Beaty, and Colin Firth and Matthew Beard playing Blake Morrison himself as an adult and teenager, respectively.

Two series of The Aunty Jack Show were made in 1972 and 1973 respectively.

This was near her own home in Peacehaven, and Fields often visited, with the children all calling her ' Aunty Grace '.

During the next three decades, Crosby would dedicate her time as " Aunty Fanny " to work at various city rescue missions, including the McAuley Water Street Mission, the Bowery Mission, the Howard Mission, the Cremore Mission, the Door of Hope, and other skid row missions.

An enraged Aunty has Blaster executed and invokes the law since Max broke his deal with her.

Max is found by Aunty, but having earned her respect, she spares his life and leaves.

Raine spent part of World War I, ' a few short years ', with her Aunty Peggy Black at the Manse in Great Bavington Northumberland.

All episodes featured segments with Aunty Jack and her sidekicks — blonde bombshell Flange Desire ( Sandra McGregor ), the tremulous Thin Arthur ( O ' Donoghue ) and the snobbish Narrator Neville ( John Derum ).

By the time Series 2 was underway Bond was already tired of Aunty Jack so he decided to kill her off in the final episode, " The R-Certificate Show " when, shocked by the gratuitous sex and nudity, Aunty Jack expires from a heart attack.

After a failed court case against Golly, Hector and Lord Kilwillie, Stella is thrown out of her hotel by Duncan's Aunty Liz, and ends up at Glenbogle House to the horror of Hector.

Before its release, the song was briefly titled " Aunty Gin's Theme " after his father's youngest sister, because it was one of her favourites.

She turned down many big films such as Sapoot, Agnaary, Mr and Mrs Khiladi, Bandahan, Aunty No. 1, Dulhe Raja, Davaa, Shikari and Hogi Pyar Ki Jeet because her role was not substantial.

Actress Sana Nawaz is her Aunty.

As " Aunty Poppy ", she reads stories, which she wrote herself, on RTÉ radio and TV.

The popularity of the series led to a one-off TV special, Aunty Jack Rox On, a concert tour, a # 1 hit single, " Farewell Aunty Jack " ( a version of the closing theme of the series ) and a best-selling album Aunty Jack Sings Wollongong, released in early 1974.

* Aunty Jack's official home information about the TV series and stage show