Revolting residents: Elders unite in Chalk and Cheese
Can political adversaries ever find common ground to fight for a cause? They can and they do in Ross Fitzgerald and Ian McFadyen’s latest satirical novel.
Does it take an odd couple to write about an odd couple? If that gives you Felix Ungar and Oscar Madison flashbacks (the diametrically opposed characters of film and TV fame), you get the general idea.
But the odd couple in Ross Fitzgerald and Ian McFadyen’s latest collaboration, Chalk and Cheese, is Ben Curran and Bill Bradley, octogenarian residents at the whimsically named Elysian Fields nursing home.
And, yes, they are an odd couple who are, as the saying goes, like chalk and cheese. Curran is a leftie and Bradley is a conservative and these former radio stars hate each other. But in this engaging novel Bill and Ben (not the Flower Pot Men people of a certain age will remember) ultimately join together to protect and enhance the lives and circumstances of their contemporaries.
This is a wry comedy but it’s also so much more. A satire? Yes. But also a novel that cleverly and sometimes movingly examines issues such as elder abuse and other matters pertaining to the treatment of the aged.
While the central characters are an odd couple, so are the authors, to a degree. Ross Fitzgerald, 80, is emeritus professor of history and politics at Griffith University. He is the author or co-author of 46 books including a memoir, Fifty Years Sober: An Alcoholics Journey. He’s also written a suite of political satires, the last four (Going Out Backwards, The Dizzying Heights, The Lowest Depths and Pandemonium) written with Ian McFadyen.
McFadyen is a writer, actor and television producer who created a series of successful TV shows, books and plays. He is best known as the creator and producer of the Australian television series The Comedy Company, which he also directed and wrote episodes for, and performed in. The show ran from February 16, 1988, to November 11, 1990.
McFadyen famously lampooned Sir David Attenborough in The Comedy Company (lampooned him lovingly, of course). His co-author, Ross Fitzgerald, says he has “never been able to look at David Attenborough without thinking of Ian’s David Rabbitborough”.
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Fitzgerald and McFadyen aren’t chalk and cheese themselves. They’re more like two different kinds of cheese, really, and have enough in common to collaborate on their books and enough differences to make their daily discussions interesting.
“When we are writing, we communicate every day,” Fitzgerald says. “We never have arguments. Someone told me Ian was very hard to work with … and he was told that I was very hard to work with. But, in fact, he’s a delight.”
When I ask McFadyen what the collaboration is like he’s more candid. “It’s hell,” he says, laughing. “But it works.”
It worked across their four novels featuring Grafton Everest, Fitzgerald’s perennial everyman whose adventures became more and more ludicrous book by book. Which delighted fans.
Grafton’s adventures may be behind them, although he has a habit of reappearing when least expected. Their next collaboration began with a cryptic message from Fitzgerald to McFayden.
“He sent me a reference to a Kingsley Amis book called The Old Devils about a bunch of elderly Welsh people,” McFayden recalls. “I said, why have you sent me this? He said we should do something about old age.”
The fact that Fitzgerald is 80 and McFadyen 77 made that a reasonable suggestion.
How to explore that in literary terms? That was a conundrum but they came up with these two crusty old adversaries as the main characters.
Some people will have their own ideas of who they might resemble – Alan Jones and Philip Adams? Or, as McFadyen suggests, two politically opposed personalities such as Ray Hadley and Robert Manne.
However, we should make it clear that Bill and Ben are not actually based on any of them. As Fitzgerald points out, the book’s subtitle, A fabrication, makes it clear that this is a work of fiction. And they deny any resemblance to living people, besides themselves.
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Anyone who knows either of them will be able to discern elements of the co-authors in their characters.
this book is also funny, although it is also poignant at times with some biting satire and social commentary
Much as Fitzgerald loves and is proud of their work together on the Grafton Everest novels, he cites this book as their most significant collaboration.
“It’s a much more important book than the Grafton Everest ones,” Fitzgerald says, adding, “it has still been a hoot writing it with Ian McFadyen.”
And fans of the pair’s comedic talents will be happy that this book is also funny, although it is also poignant at times with some biting satire and social commentary, particularly around the treatment of the elderly in Australia.
But it’s not a lecture – the themes are explored in an entertaining story that sees the two crusty old blokes collaborating to create a video podcast called The Lizards of Oz. Their podcast becomes part of a fight for justice for the elderly against bureaucracy and neglect.
The fact that they create a podcast might raise eyebrows, considering their age, but their tech-savvy grandchildren help out.
The book is also something of a social history of Australia, since both men have led long and interesting lives and various eras of Australian society and history are explored. I found it very moving when one of the female characters in the book, Helen, who never married, explains that she had one love of her life who was killed:
“Killed?” said Bill, thinking that sounded very dramatic.
“He was conscripted. In those days you could defer going into the army until you finished your degree. He finished and did his training, then was sent to Vietnam. He was killed three weeks later.” Helen said this without any emotion.
It brings a tear to the eye.
Chalk and Cheese: A fabrication by Ross Fitzgerald and Ian McFadyen, Hybrid Publishers, $24.99.