Amusing Q&A primer from Red Symons, although it has been said that guests aren't provided with a list of questions as he states in the article but are told beforehand what the topics of discussion will be.
So, imagine. You’re going to be on Q&A. It’s in a month and that’s too much time. You will push it out of your mind, like a prisoner on death row, and yet the apprehension will return, ¬relentlessly. It would be better to do the show immediately and carelessly. A frolic is immediate and careless.
You have been invited because they “like” you.
You have credentials, you know things, but even the politicians who appear on the panel are there to be liked.
They’re just too lazy to learn a comic song.
You will be given the subject area a month in advance and the specific questions days ahead. Each inquisitor from the audience knows that they will be performing the question.
A friend of mine was asked to play the role of The Expert on The Project. While she is indeed variously expert, she was not expert in this particular matter. The producers told her not to be concerned. They would supply the answers. You knew it was theatre but you didn’t know how far it had ventured into vaudeville.
Here’s a brief battle plan for the night.
Don’t read the questions. You’ll spend a month creating byzantine answers. You’re there because they expect you can engage in the topic off the top of your head. Tony Bennett was asked in the 1950s to guest host a TV program. Anxious, he sought counsel from Frank Sinatra, who advised that no one minds if you make a mistake but they need you to care. You care, don’t you? Embrace your failure. Be wrong.
You will arrive at an important building full of people doing important things. Some will be shiny, some will be drones. The true meaning of the outrageous backstage demand — unobtainable mineral waters, no eye contact from underlings, larger olives — is to fight to make the territory Yours.
Actors don’t hide behind the curtain from nine in the morning waiting for it to go up. Don’t hang about letting the environment sap you with its self-importance. Leave the building, be with friends. Be you.
Remind yourself that this is just like chatting to the neighbour from a couple of doors down. They might even be watching. Remember how important the program seemed on TV at home? You’ll only be famous until Friday.
The makeup department likes you. These are the armourers, the anaesthetists preparing you for surgery. They know your insecurities from a thousand times before. The only skin they have in the game is yours and it turns out you’re prettier than you thought.
A makeup artist once said to me, “I’m sorry, that’s the best I can do”. I took this as a compliment. There was sufficient intimacy and trust between us that she could articulate a simple ugly truth. We laughed: no blame.
Don’t talk to the other panelists. You will, in all probability, not engage during the show so why waste the time now. Tony Jones talks to you and the guests talk through him and rarely to each other. That’s the stilted ¬televisual convention ofQ&A. You’d throw a bottle if it was a dinner party.
The panellists fall into three categories. First, The Politician who will merely boost the corporate brand. If they’re any good they won’t address the question at all. That supermarket advertisement on TV with the Red Spot Special is selling the supermarket, not the special.
Second there’s The Expert, a person whose life work amounts to a Wikipedia page, the humourless monomaniac that you avoided 40 years ago in the university cafe. Someone unaware of the broader study of Proust, Pingu and Penskovski.
The last category is The Entertainer, the ice-cream vendor at the beheading. Do not under any circumstances engage with this person. At most, raise an eyebrow of disassociation.
The audience is not the audience. They are a theatrical device. To insiders they are “warm props” and “atmospheric artists” They are a serious/pretty/clever wish list of The Executive Producer indicating who he would like to impress. The tweeted subtitles represent the angry villagers with pitchforks, vetted and let in one at a time. Recent hashtagged controversies suggest, however, that there may be a few angry villagers already inside the fence. Have compassion for the audience questioner. If you’ve spent a month agonising over your answers consider this. The questioner has been rehearsing two sentences for just as long.
Don’t look at the camera. Don’t not look at the camera. This is a larger subject than it would at first appear.
Malcolm Turnbull was on Q&A earlier this year and “went down the barrel”, employing the somewhat clunky conceit of directly addressing the President of Indonesia in regard to state executions. What! The President watches Q&A?
Turnbull was talking to You, and having pierced the electro-mechanical veil, he continued to directly address you, the camera, for the rest of the show. The Magisterial Address to the Nation. Job done.
The most winning thing you can do as a panellist is to address the room and then at the final conclusive moment, as you deliver your wry summation, find the camera and offer eye-contact with the viewer.
When my friend Shirley Strachan died in a helicopter accident, I was the placeholder for his absence, the go-to TV talking head for response. I emoted my piece to the interviewer, then turned to camera for the coda: “See you, Shirl.”
It was heartfelt, authentic, effective and made absolutely no sense at all. He was not in the camera. It was manipulation and yet it was somehow real. On second thoughts, forget about the camera. When you see footage of yesterday’s plane crash with the word “live” slashed across it you are presented with a mixed truth. The footage was live but it is no longer.Q&A may be “live” but it is largely lifeless. It is a program to be watched with finger poised over the fast-forward button. Occasionally something interesting happens; a man with bananas on his hat criticises a politician or #noreacharound.
Q&A is a flagship program that draws a creditably large audience for the ABC. It is unusually difficult nowadays to get a million viewers. Q&A approaches this. It also sets the media agenda in its penumbra. Credit where credit’s due, blah blah. Consider this: if a panellist, in the simplest act of insurrection, were to stand up and walk to the audience for a chat, it would be like opening a door on a plane in mid-flight. That’s my idea of live.
A friend once told me that Tony Jones has a lady’s bottom. I have no evidence that he even exists below the waist. I have never met him. I’m going with it anyway.
