Steve Vizard 

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I went to uni with Steve. We struck up some silly conversation in the union building through our mutual friend Tony Rickards. These guys were doing revues. That kind of peculiar form of cabaret, which is associated with universities such as Oxford and Cambridge. Dudley Moore and Peter Cook came out of that world. Melbourne Uni had their own version, the famous Law Revue, and Steve was very involved in that as a writer and as a comedian. They formed a group with another guy called Geoff Street, called the Hardy Perennials. 

 

I became their musical director and pianist. We traveled around doing comedy. And out of that accidental relationship, I got very involved in the comedy and cabaret world. The venues in Melbourne at that time were The Last Laugh, which was in Smith Street, Collingwood, and the Flying Trapeze, which was a little club in Brunswick Street. I did a number of different shows in those venues. And at The Last Laugh upstairs was a bar, which later was called Le Joke. I used to be like the house pianist up there.

 

When I came back to Australia Steve had become a lawyer. I needed a lawyer to look at my film contracts. So Steve became my lawyer. Little did I know that Steve himself was getting into film production. Steve was aware that I was writing music for films. So he said, why don't you write music for my films? Subsequently, he started to make the TV show Fast Forward. And he brought me onto that. I wrote the theme music and all of the musical sketches,  all of those parodies of pop songs that they used to do. That led to Full Frontal, which I also was involved with. Meanwhile, Tonight Live started and we spent weeknights together on live television. 

 

After Tonight Live wrapped, I didn't see him that often. Many years later, he rang me up and asked if I was interested in working on a musical or a play. He wasn't sure yet what it was going to be. But he'd like me to collaborate with him on it. It ended up being a project for the Melbourne Theatre Company. We later did Banquet of Secrets, for Victorian Opera. Then we produced The Space Between, which was for Arts Centre Melbourne.

 

Steve has a mind like a steel trap. He’s sort of a genius brain. Friends for life.