The Aunty Jack Show – Series One
Clip 2: The Italian lesson
1 min 53 sec
Taken from the TV program The Aunty Jack Show – Series One (1972)
Original title classification PG – this clip chosen to be PG
Availability of the complete title
Curator’s clip description
Peter (John Derum) wants to learn Italian. He puts a record of ‘Italian Made Easy’ on the turntable. The voice on the recording accuses him, in Italian, of having an extramarital affair with Beryl, ‘Beryla’, while on the other side of the record, in the advanced course, Beryl continues her extra marital affair with Peter until a jealous husband shoots her.
Curator’s notes
This sketch is from the episode called Kulture, in which Thin Arthur (Rory O’Donoghue), Narrator Neville (John Derum) and Flange Desire (Sandra MacGregor) attempt to introduce the arts to Wollongong, the coal mining and steel mill town just south of Sydney where culture is the domain of ‘pinkies and poofters’. Aunty Jack is deeply suspicious of anything ‘arty’. In this sketch, Peter (John Derum) is attempting to learn Italian from a 78rpm record. What follows is extremely funny as Derum, with great comic timing, discovers that his pre-recorded Italian tutor is seemingly aware of his extramarital affair.
John Derum was already an established comic actor when he joined the amateur team of Rory O’Donoghue and Grahame Bond who until they met Maurice Murphy the ABC comedy producer, had only ever written and performed in architecture reviews at Sydney University. John Derum was not available for the second series of Aunty Jack so Gary McDonald joined the team in his place. His small role as the bumbling television journalist Norman Gunston in the sketch What’s On In Wollongong became the little Aussie bleeder that took Australia by storm in two series of The Norman Gunston Show for the ABC in 1975 and 1976.
Janet Bell, curator
