There’s a moving quote by “Peter” saying Reed was a positive influence on him, and the BB was a more loving family for him than his own.

“Marcia” says in an interview that she didn’t suspect Reed was gay, she’d fantasised she’d “run off with him one day and marry him”!

It must have been amazing for members of the public to see Reed taking the whole Brady Bunch out on holidays together. He’d get permission from their parents, then take them on educational tours to inspire their acting careers.

I like how the kids all got along too, in a Sunshine Day-kinda way.

I haven’t watched the variety shows or other spin-offs, but one of the documentaries says Reed was always insistent that he’d play the father role, even for the musicals, and it took him ages to learn how to sing and dance, as he was hopeless at it (in the Grand Canyon episode, they sing round a campfire, and you can hear how tuneless he was before all the training). Despite Reed hating many of the Brady Bunch scripts (particularly the slapstick element, which he felt was a dated form of comedy), and arguing with the producers a lot, he stuck to playing the father so he could hang out with his BB “family”. I find it very touching.

I like all the BB characters, particularly Jan. Her “Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!” tirade and glasses episodes are among my favourites. I like the George Glass, Vote for Jan and Jan the Only Child episodes too. Here’s a parody of the Best of Jan Brady.

Gareth Malone and the Military Wives.

Australian military tell what it’s really like.

He studied poetry at Oxford University, but there aren’t many full-time jobs in that area, so he ended up in  interactive/digital storytelling.

A big project, Perplex City, involved working with three other writers. One was in NY. They used a lot of Skype text chat and google docs to work on projects in real time. A private Wikipedia kept track of the complex storyline. Actors blended in with crowds when the story spilled into the real world. It was sponsored by a venture capitalist that went on to make squillions out of its next project.

Examples of a great self-marketer: J.C Hutchins. Couldn’t get his book published, so he started with podcasts.

Also, Varela showed us how to get crowd-sourced funding, such as by Pozible in Australia.

Get on LinkedIn and into the chat rooms.

[might be a couple of corrections to make on this ... waiting for the OK.]

The exhibition was excellent, really blew us away as we walked in, so vibrant. I knew Michèle Heibel from when we worked at ACP for the Packers, around 1995. A couple of other friends from those days had turned up too, Ashlea and Fi, and thanks to Facebook, we’d all been in touch again.

Michèle was renowned in the office for having a black belt in karate and took up ballroom dancing; a dangerous, yet potentially graceful, combination.

The artworks were very different: Michèle’s where black and white and her mother’s were very colourful. Both inspired good cheer. We asked if they took commissions, but no.

A bloke spoke about how he’d used some of Dorothée’s works as product labels, and they’d been accepted by the US, but rejected by the Swedes as being “too promiscuous”. “The Chinese accepted them — but we’re not sure what they think, we couldn”t really understand what they’re saying.”

Many liked Dorothée’s self-portrait, which looked a little like Margaret Olley. Michèle’s On The Grapevine silhouette was a big favourite too.

I was astounded at how beautiful Cessnock was.

My favourite bit was reading the staff noticeboards and the many clippings from The Sydney Morning Herald (reviews and also smaller stories from the My Career section or other little features about lesser-known chorus or orchestra members). It was great to see these are so important and often took up one-third of the noticeboards! They’d also pinned up postcards or email printouts from audience members praising their performance — this pleased me as I do this after feeling inspired by a great show, so I wonder if my emails are printed and stuck up somewhere? Nice to see they’re appreciated.

I read the many MEAA (Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance) notices for the performers — I’ve been a member of this union for 27 years, since it was the AJA (Australian Journalists’ Union). It was interesting to read that the performers were complaining about employers wanting to pay them for only two hours of work (when they’re onstage).

I loved the elaborate costumes, wigs and dressmaking areas (I was specially looking for any “shortcuts” — eg. ermine trim, when viewed close up, was just strips of black drawn in on a white faux fur. Impossible to tell when you’re at a distance in the audience).

Looked at the Green Room and dressing room for John Cleese, also used by Stephen Fry, Oprah Winfrey, Cate Blanchett. There were two warm up rooms. The rehearsal room warns: “No jumping” during performance hours, as “everyone can hear you”.

It was great to see the chamber orchestra’s instruments and notices — people selling violins from $25,000 to $35,000. Ads for remedial massage, by an ex-ballet dancer — for ballerinas. And many ads for weight loss and a dessert tour (maybe both businesses are run by the same person!) There were also noise readings for the various instruments in the cramped orchestra pit — it said “over 85″ was considered a hearing danger and many readings were just under that.

Wasn’t allowed to take photos. Some tourists were disappointed with the unfinished concrete beams inside (which are embossed with symbols) and I remember feeling that way when I first saw it, but this time it seemed a nice contrast to the 1 million shiny self-cleaning white exterior tiles which are all imported from Sweden. A nice little earner for the Scandinavians, thanks to architect Joern Utzon.

The design competition was held in 1957, with an estimated cost of  $7 million and it was completed in 1973, having cost $102 million. Wikipedia says: “The project was completed 10 years late and over-budget by more than 14 times.”

This famous protest incident in 2003 was the subject of many fundraisers held in Sydney for years, including selling snowdomes of the Opera House with the “No War” slogan painted on the side.

The tour finished with a filmed musical tribute, with Nick Cave’s The Ship Song.

Evelyn Waugh dunced out
His partying got out of hand, a bit.
Later writing Brideshead Revisited
Sort of made up for it.

For those who don’t feel athletic
and find rowing to be fraught,
you can still become a champion –
Tiddywinks counts as a sport.

If you get sent down
for failing to swot,
Get a job showing tourists
where Harry Potter films were shot.

*”city of dreaming spires”, a term coined by poet Matthew Arnold  in Thyrsis (1866).

_______________
RABBIT IN CIDER PIE
Yummy bunny in my tummy
Ooh I’m feeling rather funny
Hmmm… I think I’d better runny,
Quickly to the nearest dunny.
___________________
MARKS & SPENCER’S FOOD HALL

I like to eat Vegemite on Sao,
But here nothing beats prawn and mayo.

He outlined that because I’m a woman, after the initial six months of sitting in a car, I would spend the next year covering “babies with leukaemia” stories, children with life-threatening illnesses and attending paediatric hospitals. Then, after I’d done this 18-month apprenticeship I might be able to do general reporting.

He said accuracy was highly important, and mentioned a story they’d run about a former Page-3 model who’d become a prostitute. The problem was, the prostitute only looked exactly like the Page 3 model, but she wasn’t. They never found out why she’d claimed to be who she wasn’t. The real Page 3 model had just announced her engagement. “NOTW ended up paying for her wedding AND a house,” he said.

Then he ran through a scenario of how to cover a scandal, asking: “If a male Minister is having an affair with a mistress, who do you contact first — the wife, the Minister or the mistress?”
I guessed the wife, but he said: “None. First you get photos of the bloke going to and from the mistress’s house. Everyone has patterns and does things on certain days.
“Then go to the wife with the evidence. There’s a 50/50 chance she’ll be upset. Don’t go to her before you’ve collected the evidence; she could still be friends with her husband and warn him that NOTW is on to him. Then he could move out to a flat and we’d have no story.
“If the wife won’t talk, go to her father. He’ll spill the beans. As a man, he’ll have a natural instinct to protect his daughter, and you’ll be able to tell if he always suspected his son-in-law was playing around.
“Don’t go to the kids if they’re teenagers or younger.”

Thus enlightened, we went for a walk through the newsroom and there were filing cabinets everywhere and thick folders filled with all the collected data stacked high on desks. They needed three types of proof for everything as defence for court cases. The thing that struck me was the journalists were mostly men who looked frazzled and hard-bitten. I realised it wasn’t my thing.

In comparison, later I walked through the Sun newsroom and it was neat, clear of clutter and very tidy. There was no need for the Sun to bug phones — I did some night shifts and the poor reporters had to listen to endless calls from drunken, heart-broken celebrities prattling on for hours (and ringing back several times each night) about their love lives. The reporters would listen, offering advice like a therapist, and hoping for a few snippets, but usually it was a long repetitive whinge.

The only scandal I encountered at UK publications was that some women’s magazines made up stories, accompanied by photos of backpackers. I only discovered this when I tried to contact the writer of a story that was about a “tragic” holiday trip that had me in stitches, as it was so melodramatic and I couldn’t believe it was true. It turned out the writer’s name was made up too, and it had been written in-house. I also had queries and tried to contact the writer of an advice column I had to sub for a TV magazine, which didn’t make much sense, but I never got through, as it had allegedly been written by a “psychic dog”.

Thanks!