Stars of radio and comedy like Andrew Denton, Adam Hills and Mick Molloy have come out in recent weeks to remember the trailblazing, wisecracking talent of Sydney FM radio joker Doug Mulray.
"Uncle Doug", who died on March 30 at the age of 71, helped launch the Triple M brand of FM breakfast radio in 1982 and was inducted into the Commercial Radio Australia Hall of Fame in 2019.
He often attributed his success to a flair for tasteless remarks and was best known nationally for his infamous 1992 TV special, Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos, which was ordered off air mid-broadcast by Nine boss Kerry Packer who could stomach only 37 ribald minutes.
Less well known were Mulray's Newcastle roots - including a particular fondness for steam engines traced back to happy childhood excursions with his grandfather, a Broadmeadow railway signalman.
Here are some excerpts from Mulray's interview with former Newcastle Herald journalist James Joyce way, way back in July 1994 - when the Herald's weekly TV guide appeared on distinctive yellow newsprint and Mulray was promoting his return to prime-time TV for the first time since Packer had pulled him off.
Herald: Tell me about Gosford.
Mulray: I was fortunate enough to work at 2GO Gosford in 1976. I found it a very pleasant experience. If I hadn't been so ambitious, so goddamn ambitious, if I hadn't been in a hurry to become a minor media personality I'd have stayed I think. I'd have lingered longer in Gosford. Because there's not just Gosford to consider. There are so many other beautiful areas such as Umina, Tumbi Umbi, Kangy Angy, The Entrance. The Entrance is a particular favourite. I have a bit of a penchant for fibro you know. I'm one of Australia's leading experts on fibro.
Herald: Well, you would do well in Newcastle.
Mulray: I must tell you that I have a penchant for Novocastrians as well. My mother, Dorothy Reid Griffith, was born and raised in King Street, Adamstown. My grandparents were David and Sarah Griffith. He went to the war, you know, The Great War, W.W.1. He was a simple Methodist boy who believed fervently, as most Methodists do, that sex leads to dancing and before he'd fully discovered his genitals and their function he was off to war in the outfit known as the AIF fighting for the Mother Country. He used to tell me as I pored over the collection of medals that he'd taken from German soldiers in exchange for chocolate and other edible things how men would call out as they drowned in the mud in the trenches. David Griffith, I remember him well.
I remember my great-grandfather too. He took me to Minmi. He was a Welshman. He came out on the Cutty Sark. He had a picture of the Cutty Sark on the wall of his small weatherboard house in Charlestown. His name was Reid, Grandpa Reid we called him. He had a shed with pumpkins that grew over the top of it. I can remember that very clearly. And a fuel stove. And when you would come in, he'd get up, pull his braces up and then lift the kettle from the hob onto the fuel stove, which was always burning because people weren't concerned about the environment in those days. We'd have a cup of tea and I'd always ask him about the Cutty Sark. He was a formation member of The Store. The Store was a cooperative and he was member No. 13, I remember.
Herald: Phew! Do all your family memories flow as eloquently as that?
Mulray: [Laughs] Only the happy ones.
Herald: I think a lineage like yours would allow you to qualify as "Newcastle's own Doug Mulray".
Mulray: If you like. If you think it will help with ratings. But seriously, I can remember mum and dad putting me on The Newcastle Flyer, with the old 3801 up front, and I'd travel up there in those amazing little compartments with black and white pictures of Woy Woy on the wall. And you'd hang out the window and get cinders in your eyes. In those days, of course, it was safe to put one's 8-year-old on the train. There weren't too many Belanglo Bills lurking.
Herald: When did your mother leave Newcastle?
Mulray: She came down here to teachers college and met my father after the war. He was with the RAF. Handsome too in his uniform, I might tell you. I have many happy memories of Newcastle. My grandfather was a signalman at Broadmeadow. They had a sleep-out, like a glassed-in veranda, at Adamstown and you could lie there on those camp beds and hear the steam trains. It's a magical noise. I still find myself thinking fondly of it. I don't have erections or anything. It's not a sexual thing. I mean, I still do have erections but not when I think of steam trains. Anyway, we would go down there [to Broadmeadow] and he would put me up in the engine compartment and large men with stained clothes and black faces would shovel coal into blazing boilers and I would be enchanted. And we'd go to Nobbys and look at the shipwrecks because you could still see them then.
Herald: Where does your enthusiasm and your eloquence come from?
Mulray: My enthusiasm? That's probably a hormonal thing. Probably change of life. I'm normally very depressed.
Herald: What about your parents?
Mulray: My mother and father were always chatty. Chat was always a part of what we did. They used to talk to us. We were kids who were of the television generation but it didn't dominate our lives. I mean, I could probably sing you the theme from every cowboy show and I've seen every single cartoon that Warner Bros ever released. But it didn't dominate our table. We still had lots of chat. My father was a lawyer, my mother a teacher. They met in a theatrical society in the late '40s after the war. They always enjoyed literature and the English language was a thing we celebrated. So I owe them a debt really because I don't have another qualification in the world.
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