Radio funny man, Vic Davies, at the Not Too Foul fund-raiser in his honour
If I said Ian Moss, Dragon, Mikey Robins, Amanda & Jonesy and Doug Mulray, would you think Vic Davies?
Well,maybe not you, but the rest of the radio world did and they were out in force last night for the Not Too Foul fund-raiser for the former radio funny man (former for radio, not former funny – he still is) who has inoperable cancer.
More than 400 people from the radio and music industries, including a tonne of fans, turned up to the Bridge Hotel in Rozelle to raise a bit of cash for Davies, one-half of the top rated but now defunct Club Veg radio team with Malcolm Lees.
As I previously wrote, their “sucked-in calls” and musical sledges paved the way for various talking heads that followed as well as the current crop of TV comedians such as The Chaser.
Davies was diagnosed with lung cancer earlier this year and has already gone through two rounds of chemotherapy, but he hasn’t let that stop him. Nor was he going to last night. He arrived at 8.10pm with his wife, Jodie, to rousing applause. Not surprisingly, for a man who has made a career out of comedy, his fabulously infectious smile beamed from under a baseball cap and he was in fine form.
Radio is a hugely competitive industry, yet all rivalries were out the window last night in honour of the respected industry figure.
Mikey Robins hosting the Vic Davies fund raiser (he knows how to hold an audience).
Mikey Robins, one-third of the Vega 95.3 breakfast show, MC’d the event despite having to drag his sorry butt out of bed at 4am this morning. Unfazed by the late night or early start, Robins declared he was going right through the night in preparation for “champagne radio” today. He kicked off the event with a delicious but not-so-sly jab at his breakfast radio competitors from 2Day FM, saying the latest item to make the silent auction list was a lie detector machine.
No one needed to mention the names, Kyle and Jackie O, but everyone was talking about their lie detector stunt-turned radio rape scandal and how appalling it was. (While on Robins, he and Tony and Bec did a brilliant interview yesterday with John Laws, the man with the golden tonsils who also showed he’s got a fine sense of humour).
Ian Moss on stage at the Vic Davies fund raiser
Next up was Ian Moss, one-fifth of legendary pub band Cold Chisel, doing an acoustic version of Telephone Booth before finishing with a haunting rendition of the Stuart Gorrell-Hoagy Carmichael song, Georgia On My Mind. The song made famous by Ray Charles is one of Davies’s favourites. After Moss’s five-song performance, a senior record company executive turned to me and said, “I’ve never looked at Ian Moss outside Chisel before, but I’m looking at him differently now. He’s good.”
It was great to see the stage being shared by rival breakfast broadcasters like Robins, Rob Duckworth and Amanda & Jonesy (or is it the other way round?) who riffed off each other in style.
Nanna (aka a very naughty Dave Gibson in nurse drag) made an hysterical appearance, as did one of the funniest men ever to grace the airwaves, Dougie Mulray. Given the brains-that-be at Austereo haven’t got a replacement for their “in-recess” brekkie show, why not bring Dougie back? He was the power-house FM morning broadcaster for most of the 80s and early 90s and is, without doubt, one of the fastest thinkers on his feet. He was also ahead of the curve with his Internet radio experiment broadcast from Sydney’s iconic music spot, The Basement.
Also in the house were Stu Cranney, Wazza the Rock Dog, Rob Duckworth, Andrew Denton, Paul Murray and various other talking heads as well as the indefatigable Angela Bishop and a crew from the Ten Network.
The event was pulled together by Rina Ferris, one of Sydney’s smartest music industry publicists, and all money raised will help Davies and his family fight the illness.
