Roy & HG are an
Australian comedy duo, with
Greig Pickhaver taking the role of
HG Nelson and
John Doyle as
"Rampaging" Roy
Slaven. Their act is an affectionate but irreverent parody
of Australia's obsession with sport. Their characters based on
archetypes in sports journalism: Nelson the excitable announcer,
Slaven the retired sportsman turned expert commentator. In his 1996
book
Petrol, Bait, Ammo & Ice, Nelson (aka Pickhaver)
summarised the duo's comedic style as "making the serious trivial
and the trivial serious".
Radio
Doyle and Pickhaver wrote and hosted the live, improvised, and
satirical radio program
This Sporting Life
on
Triple J from 1986 to 2008.
They also broadcast
annual live commentaries of the NRL and AFL grand
finals (dubbed the Festival of the Boot, Parts I and
II) and the Melbourne
Cup
. Commentaries for all three matches of the
annual
rugby league State of Origin series are also
broadcast (
main article: Roy and HG's State of
Origin commentary), and they have also broadcast live
commentaries of other major events, including the Bicentennial
celebrations on 26 January 1988 and the
2007 Australian federal
election (
Indecision 07). They also provided a
half-hour coverage of the
2008
Beijing Olympics every weekday under the guise of the
Golden Ring Show.
During late 2008, they left Triple J and as of 12 January 2009,
they host the drive-time program
The Life on the
Triple M network, on Mondays and Fridays.
Television
ABC
After
several years on radio, Roy and HG transferred the radio show's
format to a series of ABC
television shows, including Blah Blah Blah (1988) (where they were
only seen in silhouette), This Sporting Life (1993), the
Logie award-winning Club
Buggery (1995-97) and its successor The Channel Nine
Show (1998), Planet Norwich (1998; made in the UK)
and The Memphis Trousers Half-Hour (2005; taped in Sydney
but performed as if broadcast from America).
Seven Network
After transferring to the commercial
Seven
Network in the late 1990s, they initially appeared in the
disastrous
Win Roy & H.G.'s Money (2000), an
ill-fitting adaptation of the US hit
Win Ben Stein's Money. But they
soon consolidated their popularity and reached a vast new audience
with
The Monday Dump and
The Nation Dumps.
Their biggest hit was undoubtedly their top-rating
commentary-interview television program
The Dream with Roy and HG
(from the
Sydney 2000
Olympics), featuring their own special outlook on the event.
This was followed by three spinoffs -
The Ice Dream (from
the
2002 Salt Lake City Winter
Olympics),
The Cream (from the
2003 Rugby World Cup), and more
recently
The Dream again for the
Athens 2004 Olympics.
During the Ice Dream
they launched a bid for the Winter Olympics to be held at Smiggin Holes
, in the humorous Smiggin Holes 2010 Winter
Olympic bid with suggested slogans "Unleash the Mighty
Mongrel", "Winter Wonder Down Under" and "If you've got the poles,
we've got the holes.".
A
Dream style coverage of the
2006 FIFA World Cup, called the
Dribble mit HG und Roy was streamed
via the Internet.
Roy and HG were not selected by Channel Seven to cover the
Beijing Olympics because of security
concerns and the belief by Channel Seven management that the style
of their coverage - going to air live following a day's events -
would not have suited Australian audiences given Australia's time
zones. Instead, a daily radio programme,
The Golden Ring
Show, was broadcaston Triple J, with Roy styled as "Crouching
Tiger" and H.G. as "the Hidden Dragon".
Memphis Trousers
In 2005,
they starred in The Memphis Trousers Half Hour, a TV show
they claimed was recorded in different American cities such as
Baltimore
or Albuquerque
, ensuring that 'Australia is the flavour of the
month, every month'. The show screened weekly on the ABC on Saturday nights and was named after an incident
in which former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser lost his trousers in a
Memphis
Hotel.
In typical style, the show was made to look like it was filmed in
America, when in fact it was filmed entirely in Sydney. The format
was a parody of American talk shows and pretended to present
Americans with new 'facts' about Australia.
Awards and nominations
| Year & Ceremony |
For |
Award |
Result |
| 1997 Logie Awards |
Club Buggery |
Most Outstanding Achievement In Comedy |
Won |
| 1997 Logie Awards |
Club Buggery |
Most Popular Comedy Program |
Nominated |
| 1998 Logie Awards |
Club Buggery |
Most Outstanding Achievement In Comedy |
Nominated |
| 2001 Logie Awards |
The Dream with Roy and HG |
Most Popular Sports Program |
Won |
| 2001 Logie Awards |
The Dream with Roy and HG |
Most Outstanding Comedy Program |
Nominated |
| 2002 Logie Awards |
The Monday Dump |
Most Popular Sports Program |
Nominated |
| 2002 Logie Awards |
The Monday Dump |
Most Popular Sports Program |
Nominated |
| 2003 Australian Comedy
Awards |
17 years of radio & television work |
Outstanding Performers |
Won |
| 2003 Australian Comedy Awards |
17 years of radio work |
Outstanding Networked Radio Comedy
Performance |
Won |
| 2003 Logie Awards |
The Ice Dream |
Most Outstanding Comedy Program |
Nominated |
| 2003 Logie Awards |
The Monday Dump |
Most Popular Sports Program |
Nominated |
| 2004 Logie Awards |
The Cream with Roy and HG |
Most Popular Sports Program |
Nominated |
| 2005 Logie Awards |
The Dream in Athens |
Most Popular Sports Program |
Nominated |
|
Published works
- 1993: Tool talk and wise cracks with Roy and HG (sound
recording)
- 1995: Roy & HG present Allan
Border: cricket's first saint (sound recording)
- 2000: The dream with Roy and H. G: the Sydney 2000
Olympic Games, (DVDs)
- 1996: Petrol, Bait, Ammo and Ice
Influence on artists in other media
In 2001 a portrait of Roy and HG by visual artist
Paul Newton won the Packing Room award and the
People's choice award at the
Archibald
Prize.
References
- The Australian Seven goes into morning over Roy
and H.G. demise
External links
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