Marty Fields’ secret childhood in Melbourne’s underworld
As the son of TV stars, Marty Fields was always destined to rub shoulders with a certain crowd. But long before finding fame on Hey Hey It’s Saturday, he was mingling with celebs of a very different kind.
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Growing up the son of screen stars Maurie Fields and Val Jellay, Marty Fields was always destined to rub shoulders with Melbourne’s rich and famous.
But long before becoming a fan favourite on Hey Hey It’s Saturday, the popular comedian was already mingling with celebrities of a different kind — those at the centre of the city’s underworld.
Now, he’s told Andrew Rule’s Life and Crimes podcast his childhood played out amid the notorious union bloodshed of the 1970s and early 1980s.
“We had a lot of guns,” he explains, adding how the weapons were “everywhere”.
“Tough guys liked dad and were worried people were after him so they gave him a gun.”
“I took a gun when I was 12 and I gave it to mum who gave it dad.”
Among this unusual family dynamic were close friendships with the likes of notorious union heavyweights Putty Nose Nicholls and Pat Shannon.
The scene of much of the interaction was the Council Club in South Melbourne, where Putty dropped by for one particular visit in 1981 — and was never seen again.
“One night he came in for a beer and said ‘I’m going to Albury’ — but he didn’t make it to Albury,” Fields said.
Putty was later found dead in his car, it was ruled a suicide, amid heavy speculation of murder.
Eight years earlier, it was Pat Shannon who was gunned down in the bar of the Druids Hotel in South Melbourne — with killer Billy ‘The Texan’ Longley and the weapon disappearing soon after the act.
Never far from the action, Fields now reveals his unexpected connection to the killing.
“It might have spent some time in the back of my dad’s car,” he tells Life and Crimes of Longley’s murder weapon
“Dad’s Gold Premier Holden … was the home base for quite a few things that were floating around Melbourne, and people used to throw things in dad’s boot, sometimes without him even knowing.”