Australian Story: May 18

Monday’s Australian Story profiles two TV favourites: John Doyle and Greig Pickhaver aka “Rampaging” Roy Slaven and HG Nelson.

The episode includes interviews with Julia Zemiro (who introduces), Charlie Pickering, Wendy Harmer, Glenn Lazarus and Paul Sironen.

When John Doyle and Greig Pickhaver met on the set of a children’s television series 35 years ago, it was the beginning of one of Australia’s most enduring comedy partnerships. “Rampaging” Roy Slaven and HG Nelson began by presenting short segments on radio station Triple J but soon had their own weekly show, This Sporting Life, which ran for 22 years.

Early in their career, Roy and HG branched into television, first at the ABC and then most famously at Channel Seven, where their inimitable coverage of the 2000 Sydney Olympics brought them global attention.

Over the years Roy and HG have worked in various mediums at various networks but early this year they returned to ABC radio where it all began. Within weeks Covid-19 laid waste to the sporting landscape but this was just grist to the mill for an act that has never been about sporting results and fixtures.

Doyle and Pickhaver have always been reluctant to examine the chemistry that fuels their partnership, preferring to let their alter-egos do the talking for them. But in an intimate and revealing Australian Story, they drop the masks, revealing how they were shaped by their childhoods, how their act works and why they rarely socialise with one another.

Producer: Greg Hassall

8pm Monday on ABC.