Shaun Micallef: ‘Charlie Pickering said that’s the only thing keeping him going

Your latest novel, De’Ath Takes a Holiday, is a vampire comedy, a satire of gothic fiction and a revision of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Why? Well, I love that period of writing, and one of my favourite books is Samuel Butler’s Erewhon, which is a satire of Victorian values. I took a leaf out of his book in wanting to do a satire of how the world got to be the way it was. I’m basically blaming this proto-Dracula figure – the Comte De’Ath – for introducing the rather bloodless, exploitative way the world works. So [in my book] he meets a whole bunch of people throughout history, including Sigmund Freud and Henry Ford, and influences them. Someone really nicely described it as being like Forrest Gump. You’ve done a hell of a lot of TV over your career; what’s been the most fun? Probably Mad As Hell. My job was to distract people in any given week, and hopefully find the fun in the news, if there was any. And in terms of having a great group of people around, with whom it was fun to make a show, it was definitely those 11 years. It’s a long time to spend with people, and it was a joy to go to work – even during Covid. Because the audience wasn’t there during those two years, we were just basically amusing each other. Even when the audience came back, I found myself just sitting there enjoying these performances happening around the desk. I can clearly be seen laughing and enjoying it – in a way that I think is unprofessional. What habit are you trying to kick? Well, I try to give up something every now and again, just to make sure I can. That’s quite Catholic of you. Maybe it is, yes. I’ve decided that eating butter is a sin, so I must stop that. I figure that at some point I won’t be allowed to do certain things like eat salt or butter or whatever, so I might as well get rid of it now. It’s a controlling thing, I think, rather like quitting a show well before they sack me. So yeah, having got rid of tomato sauce, I’ve now moved on to butter. It’s a challenge but I’ll win. I’ll beat it. That’s my nemesis – my Moriarty is butter. Do you have an actual, human nemesis? I guess it’s Charlie Pickering, because he had the show that’s most similar to mine. I’d been at the ABC for a couple of years doing Mad As Hell and Charlie asked me to lunch. He was talking about a news satire that he was thinking of doing and I was like, “That’s great, Charlie, you should do that.” I’m thinking, “Oh, he’s coming to me as the old master. He wants to sit at my knee and learn what I’ve learned over my vast, long career. I wonder where he’s going to do this show.” As it turned out, it was in the same time slot and the same network that I was on. We had a tag team approach for a few years – he’d do his little show, then I’d do my little show. After I finished in 2022, I went on his radio show and he asked me how long I’d done Mad As Hell. I said: “It was 11 years and 15 seasons. How many seasons are you going to do?” And he said: “I’m going to be doing 16 at the very least.” He said that’s the only thing keeping him going – to vanquish me. What’s the most chaotic thing that’s ever happened on set? I did a variety show for Channel Nine in 2003, and they kept making me do pilots but not giving me any notes. I thought: “Well, they’re clearly not happy with it, but they won’t tell me why.” By the time we went to air, they had almost just shrugged their shoulders and said: “Oh well, we might as well” – so I had no confidence in the show at all. It was live to air and I remember I was standing backstage waiting to go through the curtain and I had this terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. I rang my wife, just as the voiceover was starting, and I said: “Oh my God, I just hate this.” She couldn’t believe it: she’s watching the TV, seeing the curtain, hearing the voiceover, hearing the music playing, and then I ring her, and all I say is “I hate this” and then “I’ve got to go” – and then I walk straight out on stage. It’s floating around the internet, and you can see the expression on my face when I walk through the curtain – this sort of fake, plastered, odd smile. It just makes me realise what a sham I am. [laughs] What’s the best lesson you learned from someone you’ve worked with? When I started working in television back in 1994, as a writer on Jimeoin’s show. The director was a fellow called Ted Emery, who I then went on to work with on Full Frontal. He was the one who put me in front of the camera. I always assumed I would just be a writer because I was 30 and felt my years as a potential lead were over, but he had faith in me. I think I was earning $120 a week as a writer and he said he’d give me another $40 a week to be an extra. Eventually I had some lines, and then I was on the live night, and then I was in the cast. I owe my career to him. He taught me everything I know about how to produce a TV show; how to make sure you’re building a family of people, how you listen to people. [He taught me that] anyone’s contribution is worth listening to, if you’ve got the time. He passed away earlier this month. I miss him terribly. You’re a cinephile. What film do you always return to, and why? Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s my Christmas film and I must have seen it 30 times over the course of my life. I always get a bit emotional by the end. It has some great truths in it and as I’ve gotten older I see it more clearly. A lot of people come to it thinking it’s going to be a fun festive film – but it’s actually very dark. It reflects the jaded cynicism that existed immediately after the second world war. James Stewart and Frank Capra had both served in the war and they’d seen a lot of death. It looks almost like a silly comic book film at first but then 40 minutes in you’ve got somebody wanting to kill themselves. And then you come out the back of it and you’re uplifted and feel very positive about life – thanks to the skill of the storytelling and the actors. What’s the last thing that made you laugh out loud? I saw Lachy Hulme in A Christmas Carol last year. He’s always been very funny. The best laughs are in the theatre. I spent a bit of time in London earlier this month, watching as many shows as I could – including Dracula – but I also saw a whole bunch of comedies and had the great pleasure of being in a room with other people laughing at something on stage. There’s something very special about that. What’s on your career bucket list at this point? I’d love to tell a story in a feature film. I’ve had a crack at the half-hour dramas and telemovies but there’s something nice about going to the pictures. I’d like to be the person responsible for something that would make people say, “Oh, let’s go to the pictures.” I’m giving myself away by using that expression, I sound like somebody from the 1920s. I’ll make a very unpopular film, it probably won’t have sound and it’ll need someone playing the piano during it. I did, for a while, entertain the idea of [running a cinema]. My wife once asked: “What do you want to do when you retire?” and I said: “Oh, it’d be nice to buy an old cinema and just run my favourite films.” What are you secretly really good at? In all honesty, I don’t think I’m good at anything – but I’m OK at a whole bunch of things. I’m doing comedy by default, really, because I can’t sing, I can’t dance, I can’t play musical instruments. I have no discernible talent for anything, nor do I have the discipline to learn anything. I wasn’t a great lawyer. If I’d stuck at it … I reckon I’d be pretty good. I’m pretty forensic. I think I’m reasonably good at making sense of things – and that’s our job as human beings, isn’t it? To try to make sense of, if not life with a capital L, then our own small-l life. And I do that through my efforts at art. - De’Ath Takes a Holiday by Shaun Micallef is out on 31 March (Ultimo Press, $34.99). Shaun Micallef appears at the Wheeler Centre on 31 March and at Melbourne writers festival on 6 and 9 May. Comments (…) Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion