Every show has a second show going on behind it. Wonder World was no different. These are the stories the crew still tell each other: the long nights in the edit suite, the dog that was heavier than he looked, the slogan on the back of the t-shirts, and the boss who filed a news story from his own lounge room the night his flight made an emergency landing. They come from the people who were there. Where a memory belongs to one person, their name is on it.
Simon Townsend with Woodrow and a litter of puppies. The bloodhound was as much a part of the crew as anyone.
Around the office
The boss
Southern Comfort, three ice cubes
Ask anyone on the crew what Simon drank and you get the same answer, right down to the ice. A glass of Southern Comfort with three ice cubes. Not two, not four. Three. There is something very Simon in a man who ran a children's show, who once went to jail rather than fight a war he did not believe in, and who still had his drink order down to the exact cube.
Remembered by Angie Vaughan
Wardrobe
The t-shirt with Chairman Mao on it
The crew t-shirts were not what you would expect from an afternoon kids' show. They are remembered as carrying a line attributed to Chairman Mao Zedong: "All of life is politics." Pat O'Neill is remembered as the one who made them, and Sheridan Jobbins as the one who knew what it was getting at. It was the kind of cheeky in-joke that fitted a show which never talked down to its audience.
Remembered by Pat O'Neill and Sheridan Jobbins
A Simon trademark
The memos
One of Townsend's memos, this one to his reporters in 1985, laying down four rules for filming. Signed, simply, "Sion".
Townsend ran on memos. Typed, pointed, and absolutely everywhere. People who worked on the show talk about them the way you talk about the weather. They followed him home, too. His son Michael grew up finding memos taped to his bedroom door, family included. A memo meant Townsend had been thinking about you, usually about something you had done wrong, but thinking about you all the same.
From the show's memos and the family archive
Out on the road and in the suite
The hound
Woodrow was heavier than he looked
"I had to operate Hound a few times and it was bloody tough work!" Simon Thomson
After Simon, Woodrow the bloodhound was the most famous face on the show. He was Townsend's own pet, lived in a large doghouse at the family home in Gladesville, and fathered a litter of seven. He had his own fan club, pulled up to four hundred letters a day from children around the country, and was the official mascot of the Bloodhound Breeders' Association. Townsend once put his back out lunging for the leash. When Woodrow died in 1986, a sulphur-crested cockatoo took over as mascot, and later a labrador the viewers named Logie. There was also a costume version of the dog for some appearances, and working it was a job nobody envied. Simon Thomson did a few shifts inside it and has never quite forgotten the ache.
Told by Simon Thomson
First job
Alita Fahey's first music clip
Plenty of people remember Alita Fahey's clips. Fewer remember her first one. It was Mental As Anything's "If You Leave Can I Come Too?", shot by cameraman Steve Arnold. The famous Rolf clip came later. Wonder World had a habit of handing someone their first real go at something, then quietly letting them get good at it on air.
Remembered by Alita Fahey
After hours
The edit suite that moved to a flat
Simon had a rule. At close of business he ordered everyone out, no arguments. The work did not always stop there. Penny Ronald remembers the editors carrying on at her flat of an evening, then coming back to finish the stories that deserved the extra hours. Part of the show people remember was made well after the official close of business.
Remembered by Penny Ronald
The workload
The eleven day fortnight
Sheridan Jobbins had a line for the hours everyone was pulling. She told fellow reporter Maurice Parker they were working an eleven day fortnight. Anyone who has worked in daily television will get the maths, and the tiredness behind the joke. The show went to air five afternoons a week, and it did not make itself.
Remembered by Sheridan Jobbins
The newsman never clocked off
Scoop
He filed the Jakarta story from his lounge room
Simon never really clocked off as a newsman. When a British Airways flight he was on made an emergency landing in Jakarta, most people would have poured a stiff drink and gone to bed. Simon got home, rang the show's publicist Harvey Shore, and gave him a first-hand account to place with the media. It was in the papers the next day. The instinct that built his career did not switch off just because he had nearly come down over Indonesia.
Told by Harvey Shore
The archive
A folder that should be a book
Bronwyn Grantham still has a thick folder of show material she has hung onto for decades. She reckons it would make a good coffee-table book. She is probably right. Half the reason this archive exists at all is that the people who made the show could never quite bring themselves to throw any of it out.
Remembered by Bronwyn Grantham
Your turn
Do you remember this? Were you there?
If one of these stories belongs to you, get in touch to have your name put to it, or to set the record straight if a detail is wrong. And if there is a story here that has not been told, the edit suite at midnight, the day a shoot went sideways, the guest who stole the show, the archive would like to hear it. The best of them will join this page, in the teller's own words and with their name.
