Ted Emery obit

Vale: Ted Emery

 

Legendary Australian comedy director Ted Emery, best known for Kath and Kim, Fast Forward and Countdown, has died.

He was not on the list.

Legendary Australian comedy director Ted Emery, best known for Kath & Kim, Fast Forward and Countdown, has died.

He passed away at his Noosa home this morning, following a battle with cancer.

Emery joined ABC as a stage hand in the 1970s, after serving in Vietnam.

He worked his way from an ABC stagehand in Ripponlea studios, Elsternwick, to floor managing and, unexpectedly, to the Director’s chair.

“Because of the way the ABC worked, they didn’t care whether it was Divine Service or Market to Market or Light Entertainment, you spent time everywhere – which wasn’t a bad idea,” he once told TV Tonight.

By 1976 he was tasked with Directing and Producing Countdown led by Go-Set journalist Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum as its Talent Co-ordinator.

“It was my first ever television show. I shit myself! I had diahorrea for a week!”

If it was a baptism of fire he would rise to the occasion remaining in the role for over 2 years. Countdown was a beast of a show to pull together, especially at the public broadcaster. If it was rough around the edges, as Molly Meldrum surely was, that was part of its Aussie charm.

“You had to get Molly to get his act together, for starters, and then you had to get the show to get its act together. But I think I went in the chair until ’79. My first band was Molly’s band called The Ferretts. They had a great song, I really loved it, called Just like the Stars. That was my first production number on Countdown,” he recalled.

“I was one of the first people to see Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. I saw, of all things, Peter Allen’s I Go to Rio. I was the guy just compiling the clips in Videotape. Molly hadn’t even seen it and I thought it was so much fun. No one had heard of Peter Allen in the age group we were going to.

“And the same thing with ABBA. The person who found ABBA was doing the same job as I was. He found it on a pile of film clips that came in, and took to Ian…. a lot of stories happened like that because we had so much product to play with.”

Yet there were other memories that lingered for Emery for all the wrong reasons, including a shoot he had planned for UK vocalist Robert Palmer for his brand new single.

“I got all the Countdown dancers in red lipstick, slicked-back hair and fake guitars and stood them in a group, behind him. I got my choreographer to do this rhythmic caterpillar routine behind him with their very straight faces, all packed up together in a line. He came in for rehearsals and the girls started up, and he said, ‘I’m not performing on your show unless you get rid of them,’ humiliatingly in front of my entire crew,” Emery explained.

“So I had to pull them off, and we did some shitty thing with dry ice and a few lights. Anyhow, lo and behold, the clip that came out next from Robert Palmer had those girls in the background. He went and got his own and copied the idea!”

Palmer’s Addicted to Love and Simply Irresistible would both go on to become ’80s classics.

“I don’t think I’ll ever forgive that man for that!”

But Emery had always fancied himself as being able to tell a joke and comedy yearned.

Seminal shows Fast Forward, Full Frontal and later Kath & Kim followed, working with Magda Szubanski, Gina Riley, Jane Turner, Glenn Robbins, Michael Veitch, Marg Downey, Peter Moon.

Emery was arguably the go-to comedy director of his generation, with credits including The D Generation Goes Commercial, Tonight Live with Steve Vizard, Acropolis Now, Jimeoin, The Eric Bana Show Live, Micallef, Welcher & Welcher plus drama series Bed of Roses.

His final credit was in 2022 for the revived Kath & Kim: Our Effluent Life, a nod to his valued place with the creative team.

A Melbourne memorial will be held in coming weeks.