Mike McColl Jones performed live just once and brought the house down

Mike McColl Jones wrote gags for Graham Kennedy, Bert Newton and Steve Vizard – and even US President Ronald Reagan used one of his funny lines.

Mike McColl Jones outside Channel 9’s old Melbourne studios where he worked for years with Graham Kennedy and Bert Newton. Picture: Alex Coppel

OBITUARY
Mike McColl Jones, comedy writer.
Born August 12, 1937. Died March 11, aged 86

Probably no one wrote as much material for live Australian television as Mike McColl Jones. Ironically, he suffered terrible stage fright and never performed live himself. Except once. And it brought the house down.

In the days after Graham Kennedy died in 2005, broadcaster and Melbourne lord mayoral candidate Derryn Hinch announced sombrely on radio that Kennedy – who all of Australia accepted was gay – had died of AIDS.

Kennedy had not. And his friends were furious at the posthumous “outing”.

Days later, Kennedy’s funeral took place at a small local theatre not far from his adopted home of Bowral in the NSW Southern Highlands. The eulogy was delivered by Kennedy’s old mate Stuart Wagstaff. McColl Jones wrote material for both – and many others including Bert Newton, Tommy Hanlon Jr, Jimmy Hannan, Mary Hardy, Darryl Somers, Don Lane and Steve Vizard. He also wrote the jokes for dozens of Logie Awards nights.

Wagstaff called McColl Jones, who was living in Melbourne, to come and say something about Kennedy at the event that was to be anything but funereal. McColl Jones drove the eight hours to Bowral – it gave him time to memorise his speech, which he wanted to do without notes.

At the microphone he said he had received a fax from Kennedy in Heaven: “Dear Mike, speak up and don’t faint,” McColl Jones began, adding Kennedy would have known how terrified he’d be.

“I hear Derryn (Hinch) outed me. I’ve got a hot flash for him – it’s rife up here. Only a few minutes ago, I saw Oscar Wilde holding hands with Chips Rafferty. I reckon if Hinch’s body is ever washed up on a beach, police will be interviewing suspects for seven years.”

McColl Jones could make claims no other Australian comedy writer could: not only had he written gags for Joan Rivers (12 of them at just $10 a pop – but it was good for the CV), he even wrote a line used by US president Ronald Reagan, thanks to Rivers, who was close to Reagan’s wife, Nancy. Rivers showed Nancy jokes McColl Jones had written for her and Nancy asked if she could keep one for her husband.

It was early in 1986 and Halley’s Comet was about to pass Earth, as it does every 75 years or so. Reagan told reporters: “I reckon I’m getting old. I’ve seen Halley’s Comet three times.”

McColl Jones’s relationship with Kennedy spanned two decades, and took in the groundbreaking In Melbourne Tonight show and later The Graham Kennedy Show. McColl Jones wrote “Headlines from the future”, a long-running segment. The first had Kennedy reading a newspaper: “Today, Elizabeth Taylor celebrated her golden wedding anniversary – 50 husbands!” By then movie legend Taylor had had several, on her way to eight.

As a child McColl Jones read voraciously – books, magazines, newspapers. He always wanted to work with words, but had no career in mind. He worked up the courage to approach Channel 9 with some gags for the Friday IMT briefly hosted by Noel Ferrier. Ferrier didn’t get the jokes, but Kennedy did and he gave McColl Jones a short contract.

McColl Jones liked being behind the scenes: “Pricking pomposity and big business through words – no one knew where the jokes (were) coming from and I loved it that way.” He was at the studio the night in 1975 when Kennedy uttered the infamous crow call that scandalised Australian television, but was quick to point out the star did not say “f’aarrrk”, but “aarrrk” – and not for the first time. He’d been making bird noises for years to “liven up” boring ads for baby powder.

He regretted the woke wave that made so much comedy redundant. He said his attitude was not to be careful, “just do it”.

If you ever had lunch with McColl Jones – itself a very memorable and amusing occasion – he would send you regular notes about humorous observations. He’d email them to me when I was editing a Melbourne newspaper. He’d regularly email Australia’s most popular broadcaster, Ross Stevenson, who captains 3AW’s breakfast show.

“What made Mike so brilliant was that he had a natural, unfeigned, acute interest in the affairs of the day,” Stevenson said. “He would email me an observation about something making the news that day or … a recollection of something from the entertainment past because he was an eyewitness to much of what happened in Australia’s golden era of variety entertainment.”

Stevenson said McColl Jones was keen to share a story but also to see it accurately preserved. When broadcaster Tony Charlton’s name popped up one day, McColl Jones emailed Stevenson recounting a story from 1969 when Lionel Rose was to box England’s Alan Rudkin. Charlton was live on air to interview Rudkin’s wife, but worked out early on it was another “Mrs A Rudkin” from Liverpool. McColl Jones wrote to Stevenson that “Tony survived it as well as he could”.

Awarded an Order of Australia in 2017, for services to television, particularly writing, McColl Jones told friends: “It’s a lot better than winning the meat tray at (his local) Harp Hotel.”