Austen Tayshus:Merchant of Menace
THE looming NSW election already feels like such a darkly comedic event that the decision by Austen Tayshus to follow his run against Tony Abbott in the last federal election with a tilt against NSW Opposition Leader Barry O’Farrell, feels a bit like a lump of coal headed for Newcastle. Nevertheless, if Tayshus does surprise everyone on March 26 and pip O’Farrell at the ballot, it should leave just enough time for authors Ross Fitzgerald and Rick Murphy to slip it into their book ‘Austen Tayshus: Merchant of Menace’ before it comes out in May. [Product placement ends here.
STREWTH THE AUSTRALIAN March 15 201
Unlucky Day
And happy birthday to rogue stand-up comedian and Outdoor Recreation Party candidate Austen Tayshus. The self-styled biggest threat to O’Farrell in
Ku-ring-gai turns 57 today. Historian Ross Fitzgerald notes St Patrick’s Day has a chequered history in Australian politics: in 1948, Queensland police gave Australia’s only Communist MP, Fred Paterson, brain damage during a street demonstration, and in 1922 “Red Ted” Theodore abolished Queensland’s upper house.
Sydney Morning Herald, March 17 (St Patrick’s Day) 2011
Waiting on Gutman
IT’S normal for an author to be nervous on the day of a book launch, but spare a thought for Ross Fitzgerald and Rick Murphy. Their tome – Austen Tayshus: Merchant of Menace – will be officially ushered into the world at the Sydney Jewish Museum tonight by their razor-tongued subject, Austen Tayshus (aka Sandy Gutman). Says Fitzgerald, “Bearing in mind that, per our agreement, Sandy did not see his biography until after it was printed, I am both nervous and exhilarated at what he might say, and do.” In the meantime, we opened a random page and here’s the first line our eyes alighted on, Gutman in mid-muse: “I just thought it was the greatest irony. A [retirement] home for Holocaust survivors with a big chimney at the front gate.”
STREWTH, THE AUSTRALIAN May 30, 2011, p13
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Comic Austen Tayshus refuses to play it by the book at his biography launch
ONLY Austen Tayshus, aka Sandy Gutman, would start his own book launch with a complaint about what a lousy event it was.
“This is such a schnorrer (Yiddish for cheapskate) event. Who has to launch their own book?
“I’ve read the book and I wouldn’t buy the book. It’s all made up.”
Any fear of offending the authors of his new biography Austen Tayshus: Merchant of Menace was quickly dispelled when he then proceeded to offend everybody in the audience.
“I recently made Kiama cry. I got a Japanese backpacker up on stage and said if she apologised for the Second World War, there would be no more tsunamis.
“People got upset.”
Gutman even distances himself from his own material.
“Nothing I say comes from my own brain anymore. It comes from my team of 10,000 Chinese writers . . . all ex-newsagent owners from Penrith.”
Gutman had the audience in hysterics in the somewhat unlikely surrounds of Sydney’s Holocaust Museum.
But the connection between Jewish humour and the suffering of Jews plays a large part in his personality.
“Not far from the comedy is the dark side,” he said. “That’s why we had it here.”
Gutman’s relationship with his father, Isaac, a Holocaust survivor, and how it shaped him is one of the central themes of the book, written by The Australian columnist Ross Fitzgerald and journalist Rick Murphy.
In Fitzgerald’s opinion, Gutman should be considered alongside Barry Humphries as Australia’s greatest living comedians.
While Gutman’s most popular work is probably his classic routine Australiana, it is his edgier, often political satire that should make him a comedy icon, Fitzgerald said.
“Farce and satire are not readily understood in Australia, which is one of many reasons why the . . . stand-up comedy of Sandy Gutman . . . is still not fully appreciated,” he said.
Surrounded by friends and colleagues last night, Gutman was not lost on anybody.
The Australian, May 31, 2011, p7.
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Sydney-based comedy star Sandy Gutman, popularly known as his alter ego Austen Tayshus, has launched his biography…”The Merchant of Menace
To an audience reacting with hysterical laughter and riotous applause, Gutman’s book made its public debut at the Sydney Jewish Museum.
Co-written by controversial Sydney-based author and broadcaster Professor Ross Fitzgerald and Western Australian writer, Rick Murphy, AUSTEN TAYSHUS: MERCHANT OF MENACE was published yesterday by Sydney-based Hale & Iremonger. A regular columnist with The Weekend Australian, AUSTEN TAYSHUS is Ross Fitzgerald’s 34th published book.
Publisher Michael Rakusin said, “It was one of the most unusual book launches I have ever attended. Normally, launches are fairly sedate affairs with the tinkling of wine glasses and the hushed chitter chatter of considered discussion. Sandy was his usual outrageous self. He redefined the concept of a book launch. I think it’s going to take two weeks for my aching ribs to recover.”
Sandy Gutman, who in the federal election stood for The Australian Sex Party against Tony Abbott in the seat of Warringah, began by talking about “erecting a rabbot-proof fence”, which involved a pun on the Liberal Party leader’s long-lost younger brother Roger Abbott.
AUSTEN TAYSHUS had the select audience of 80 in absolute hysterics, yet at the same time made it clear that, as the son of a Holocaust survivor, his comedy also has a very edgy dark side. Professor Fitzgerald, whose entry in WHOS WHO IN AUSTRALIA lists his hobbies as “AFL football, cricket, and comedy’ , told the audience that Sandy Gutman/Austen Tayshus is Australia’s most dangerous and subversive performer.
Fitzgerald pointed out that farce and satire are not readily understood in Australia – which is one of many reasons why Austen Tayshus is at the very edge stand-up comedy and is still not fully appreciated. He added that for years he has told anyone who cares to listen that ”Barry Humphries and Sandy Gutman are Australia’s two most talented, living comedians.”
For the record, before Ross & Rick Murphy began to write his biography, Sandy agreed that he could have neither any editorial input into the book or any right of veto. Gutman, who is notorious for not heeding restrictions or obeying instruction, also agreed that he would not see the book before it was printed and came face to face with it at the launch for the first time.
In front of many friends and a couple of adversaries, and members of the press, Austen Tayshus left last night’s audience baying for more. But the real test of AUSTEN TAYSHUS: MERCHANT OF MENACE will be the reviews, one or two of which are expected this Saturday.
Gutman and Tayshus will appear on the popular ABC TV program Q&A this coming Monday on a panel which will also include Fairfax award-winning journalist Paul McGeough, who covered the Gaza Flotilla incident, Greens Senator Lee Rhiannon, Minister for Health Nicola Roxon and Liberal MP Christopher Pyne
J-Wire June 31, 2011
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A rare genius for burning bridge: The career of Sandy Gutman aka Austen Tayshus has been an exercise in self-sabotage.
WHEN the comedy single ‘Australiana’ hit No 1 in 1983, Sandy Gutman, aka Austen Tayshus, sobbed, as Ross Fitzgerald and Rick Murphy record in this biography of the celebrated stand-up comedian.
I had failed and quit so many things . . . had become such a loser that it felt like my last chance to actually do something. In the Jewish culture it is encouraged, and sometimes expected, that you will attempt to do great things in your life. It was a relief more than anything.
It’s a telling passage from a book whose cover declares its subject “Australia’s most dangerous and subversive performer”.
For what becomes clear in Austen Tayshus: The Merchant of Menace is that the most lamentable victim of the subversion is Gutman, a gifted comic with a hunger for success, but also an unfathomable capacity for sacrificing his dream on an altar of narcissistic bedlam.
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The problem began at home, where Alexander Jacob Gutman, the son of a Bergen-Belsen survivor, struggled with his father’s emotional inheritance. Sandy’s younger brother, Michael, recalls a loving but distrustful father who would “react to any perceived slights by withdrawing his affection” from his older son, who was “very sensitive to my father’s moods”.
Isaac Gutman’s survival mentality saw the world in terms of success and failure, and Sandy, Michael tells the authors, “bore the brunt of my father’s unrealistic expectations”. This dynamic exploded come Sandy’s rebellious adolescence, in scenes that resonate well into the future.
“Every dinner table conversation ended in an argument,” Michael remembers.
Things would get very loud and abusive, and Sandy would storm out, leaving everyone in tears . . . That was a bit of a pattern; we were obsessed with Sandy. It became the big issue in the family, and I think the only one it didn’t worry was Sandy.
For the lounge chair psychologist — or those who know Gutman — this is most instructive indeed, and it’s no less of a pity for being inevitable that the rest of The Merchant of Menace feels bereft of such tight personal revelation, the adult Gutman having burned more bridges than the Red Army as he marched toward his artistic dreams.
Long-time friend Jack Levi, aka comedian Elliot Goblet, reveals Sandy is “prone to overreact to criticism . . . can be abrupt, if not actually abusive to people”; while David Poltorak, one-time writer for Gutman, confesses to having “felt like a punching bag” while on tour with the performer, who “treated me, and most other people, like second-class citizens, always using the self-serving rationale of ‘his art’, which excused some pretty disgraceful behaviour”.
Few people, it seems, have remained close enough to Gutman to weave for us a coherent personal narrative, and while the authors have performed a heroic job in corralling interviews with associates and industry peers, in the end there’s just too many of them, the book becoming a wearying litany of laymen’s prescriptions and disjointed anecdotes starring Sandy or Austen (it’s hard to tell which) taking the mickey out of audiences, venue managers, cab drivers, waiters, cops, petrol station attendants — anyone in his path.
What begins as a fascinating portrait of a seriously tortured artist becomes part intervention and part celebrity roast, and one feels the book might have been more nourishing had it been written directly by the subject.
Critiquing a book for what it might have been is a notoriously maligned exercise, but perhaps no more futile than to judge a performer for what he might have become but did not. Many of the voices in The Merchant of Menace do just that, the overriding opinion being that Gutman could have conquered the world if only he’d have behaved himself. The evidence does seem to bear this out: he blows an audition at the LA Comedy Store by insulting proprietor Mitzi Shore; he scuttles an SBS television series because he considers a producer’s request for a synopsis “beneath him”; a lucrative gig on the Fairstar “funship” ends abruptly when Gutman, having been prevailed upon to keep it clean for the conservative tourist crowd, opens his act by explaining, with lurid economy, that he was late because he’d been having sex with the captain.
All jolly good fun in the telling but catastrophic to a working performer’s career, and the mystery as to why Gutman is no global superstar evaporates, bit by bit, with each turn of the page.
Melbourne comedian Rachel Berger wonders aloud “how many people come back to see him a second time . . . Sandy’s got a fairly heavy loss rate, I would imagine. He thinks he needs the anger, but he would be better without it.”
Understandable as it may be, it is regrettable that Emma Cromb, Gutman’s wife of 12 years (the marriage ended in 2005) and mother of his two daughters, could not be convinced to contribute more than a perfunctory paragraph to this book. (Her mother, God bless her, contributes even less, a masterpiece of veiled mother-in-law’s contempt though it is.)
Through Emma, a girl once so enamoured with Gutman as to have abandoned her own career for him, we might have learned something truly revealing about the enigmatic man behind the curtain, far from the stage, the fellow comics, the taxi drivers, the waiters, the endless audience.
“People have asked why I stayed with him for so long,” Cromb says. “Sometimes I wonder the same thing myself.”
She is the keeper, perhaps, of a hard-learned truth: that lovers and crowds, always hypnotised by the dreamer, will inevitably tire if he doesn’t wake up.
Jack Marx is a journalist and author. His books include Sorry: The Wretched Tale of Little Stevie Wright.
Austen Tayshus: The Merchant of Menace
By Ross Fitzgerald and Rick Murphy
Hale & Iremonger, 284pp, $29.95
The Weekend Australian, June 4-5 2011 REVIEW, p24,
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TROUBLE WITH A CAPITAL T: A comic with a self-destructive streak has a talent for offending people.
Review by Michael Wilding
There is nothing quite as cheering as a show business biography. The hubris, the flamboyance, the disasters, the humiliations, and the self-destruction create a great reading experience. Here are people putting themselves into the spotlight for abuse and insults, courting death with drugs and alcohol, wrecking cars and lives, all for a moment of fame, a flicker of success, followed by the inevitable downward slope into debt and disgrace.
The story of Sandy Gutman and his stage persona Austen Tayshus is no exception. Ross Fitzgerald and Rick Murphy tell it in all its appalling typicality. ‘The disgusting ravings of a demented, depraved human being,’ declaimed the Western Australian magistrate who convicted him of obscenity. ‘The single greatest argument against using cocaine they had ever seen,’ one of the audience at Gutman’s appearance on Andrew Denton’s television show concluded.
Such reactions are routine for an artist committed to challenge. Richard Neville remarks, ‘It was pretty obvious he went looking for trouble.’ And he found it. He got himself knocked out on stage after abusing his own Hell’s Angel security guard. He got himself arrested and locked up on a cruise ship after only one sentence into his act, not appropriate for reproduction here. ‘It’s not an act; it’s who he is,’ Philippe Mora remarks.
Opening an audition at the LA Comedy Store by remarking ‘this place is no better than any other toilet I’ve seen’ unerringly produced the classic response, ‘You’ll never work in this town again.’ His ability to offend those who might further his career is legendary. It is a quality shared with many of the greatest artists in history, admirable in its way, and inevitable. What is the point of being a truth-telling stand-up comedian if you have to dilute and censor your act in order to appear on television? Being foul-mouthed, confrontational, aggressive, and manic are the mark of his integrity and refusal to compromise. Not a few of those interviewed for this book no longer speak to him. Many suggest he needs therapy. Others are more charitable. ‘He’s the therapist we need,’ Martin Sharp suggests. His self-destructive streak recalls Lenny Bruce, but unlike Bruce he has survived.
George Fischer, who booked Gutman for his Double Bay Comedy Club, lamented that he had been involved in two tragedies in his life: ‘The Holocaust … and knowing Austen Tayshus.’ Gutman’s father was incarcerated in Belsen and survived. The Holocaust is a central preoccupation of Gutman’s, fuelling his anger and commitment. Jewishness is an essential part of his identity. Though Fitzgerald and Murphy’s attempts to locate him in a specifically Jewish performance tradition are not wholly persuasive. Jewish humour may be outsider humour, but so is Irish. Jewish humour may be self deprecating, but the English have a line in that too. His penchant for taking his act into the street and appalling the innocent passer-by has much in common with Barry Humphries.
It is a mark of some humane self-knowledge that Gutman abandoned his studies of dentistry. The thought of him bearing down with a drill and a dentist’s unanswerable monologues is the stuff of nightmares. Even with laughing gas. Later enrolled at film school. Phillip Noyce recalls, ‘He couldn’t change a film canister without groaning with boredom … It was pretty clear he needed an audience. We became his audience.’
Fitzgerald and Murphy track the career of Austen Tayshus from the early collaborations with Billy Birmingham that first established him, through the later work with Michelle Bleicher and Trevor Farrant that produced such works of unforgettable brilliance as ‘Highway Corroborree’. They detail the enthusiastic marijuana use, the cocaine excess, the bankruptcy, and the decision to go straight: no more drugs or booze. He became a vegetarian at the same time. Now he proclaims celibacy. But the act remains as abrasive as ever.
AUSTEN TAYSHUS:MERCHANT OF MENACE Hale & Iremonger, 282 pp, $29.95
by Ross Fitzgerald and Rick Murphy.
Sydney Morning Herald, June 4-5, 2011, SPECTRUM p.32
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2CC (Canberra)
Drive – 02/06/2011 – 03:17 PM
Mike Welsh
Producer Ms Monica Masters 02 6241 1911
Interview with author Ross Fitzgerald. Welsh says a book about Sandy Gutman’s alter ego Austen Tayshus has been released called ‘The Merchant of Menace’ by Ross Fitzgerald and Rick Murphy. Welsh says Fitzgerald has written 34 books that he has had published. Fitzgerald says his entry in Who’s Who in Australia list his interests as AFL, football, cricket and comedy. He says he co-wrote and co-created the character of the radical schoolteacher Craig Steppenwolf with Barry Humphries. He says his comic novels about a fellow called Grafton Everest did very well in South Africa and Britain but bombed in Australia. He says he regards Austen Tayshus as the most talented Australian comedian alongside Barry Humphries. Welsh asks if Gutman was fully appreciated. Fitzgerald says satire and farce isn’t properly understood in Australia and people don’t realise how subversive he is as a performer. He says Gutman hasn’t broken through into the mainstream because stand up comedy is very hard to translate to the mainstream unless you compromise. He relates a story of how Gutman performed to some Aborigines and red necks in north Queensland. Fitzgerald says Gutman, who has an obsession with the Holocaust, will be on Q&A on Monday night with Senator Lee Rhiannon, who doesn’t think highly of Israel. Welsh asks if Gutman ran for the Sex Party in the recent NSW election. Fitzgerald says Gutman stood against Federal Opposition leader Tony Abbott for the Australian Sex Party, but couldn’t stand in NSW because of the onerous registration restrictions. He says Gutman has been sober for a few years, but he is still very self destructive. Welsh plays an excerpt of Gutman’s comedy.
© Media Monitors 2011
Interviewees: Ross Fitzgerald, Author, ‘The Merchant of Menace’; Sandy Gutman, Comedian [Excerpt]
Duration: 13:18
Summary ID: L00043995965
Audience
Male 16+: 3,700
Female 16+: 1,900
All People: 5,500
Order
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ABC North West WA (Karratha)
Statewide Drive – 02/06/2011 – 03:10 PM
Barry Nicholls
Producer Ms Pippa Doyle 08 9792 2744
Nicholls speaks with Ross Fitzgerald, co-author of Austen Tayshus: Merchant of Menace, about about Sandy Gutman, the comedian behind Austen Tayshus, and Australiana. Fitzgerald shares a few of his favourite memories of watching Gutman perform. Fitzgerald says Gutman was obsessed with the Holocaust after his father was a survivor of Auschwitz, his obsession was heavily portrayed in his comedy which had a dark edge to it. Fitzgerald explains that watching Sandy Gutman perform is an electric experience, he is unpredictable.
© Media Monitors 2011
Interviewees: Ross Fitzgerald, co-author of Austen Tayshus: Merchant of Menace
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Menacing comedy
THE funniest event of the year so far: the launch of Ross Fitzgerald and Rick Murphy’s Austen Tayshus: Merchant of Menace at the Sydney Jewish Museum, Darlinghurst, last Monday. Comedians on hand to keep the crowd in hysterics included Billy Birmingham and Gerry Connolly; plus Martin Sharp, Margaret Fink and the great Bill Harding, who has written for Norman Gunston and more recently for Austen Tayshus (Sandy Gutman).
Then, too, there was Fitzgerald himself, who co-created and co-wrote with Barry Humphries the character of the radical Australian schoolteacher Craig Steppenwolf BA DipEd.
Caroline Overington, The Diary, The Australian, June 6, 2011 Media p 31
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AUSTEN TAYSHUS: MERCHANT OF MENACE
Ross Fitzgerald and Rick Murphy
Hale & Iremonger, $29.95
This no-holds barred history of possibly Australia’s most outrageous comedian is a hectic read. It delves into his brushes with the law, his intense psyche and family background. It is an eclectic mix of analysis and humour, with excellent sources. Savour some dark comedy with this one.
Jim Kellar
THE NEWCASTLE HERALD, June 4, 2011
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JOKER OF THE WEEK
One of the funniest book launches I have ever attended was held at the Sydney Jewish Museum in Darlinghurst during the week when the comedian Austen Tayshus (aka Sandy Gutman) spoke about his biography, Austen Tayshus: Merchant of Menace, written by Ross Fitzgerald and Rick Murphy. Gutman had the audience in stitches and, in keeping with his reputation for offending, said the book was “not very good” , its contents were “completely made up”, and because “no one bought books any more” he expected “to sell only two or three copies, although we have 100,000 out the back”. The jokes paid off, however, as the queue was long at the book signing that followed. Gutman and Fitzgerald will talk about the biography again at Macleay Bookshop in Potts Point on Wednesday. See Michael Wilding’s review on page 32.
Marc McEvoy, SPECTRUM, SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, June 4-5, 2011
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Round two
STREWTH has nearly recovered from last week’s launch of Ross Fitzgerald’s and Rick Murphy’s biography of Sandy Gutman, ‘Austen Tayshus: Merchant of Menace’, where the black-clad Gutman loomed over the audience like Satan’s repo man, merrily slagging off the book. “I didn’t think I deserved a book. Not this one,” he noted in a gentler moment. “It’s the worst book – but don’t let that sway you.” The carnival of pain continues in Sydney’s Potts Point tonight when Gutman and Fitzgerald step into the ring at Macleay’s Bookshop at 6pm for round two.
The Australian, June 8, 2011, p.15
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Tutu’s view is Austen Tayshus
YOU have to worry when a comedian has more moral sense than an archbishop. But that is the conclusion to draw from the news that South Africa’s celebrated cleric Desmond Tutu has written a letter congratulating Sydney’s wacky left-wing Marrickville Council for its attempt to boycott Israel.
“I want to pay my respects to you and your fellow Councillors in Marrickville for taking a stand to isolate the Israeli state,” wrote the 79-year-old Anglican Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, to Marrickville’s Green mayor Fiona Byrne.
You’d think Tutu might find more pressing humanitarian concerns in the Middle East at the moment to write letters about than continuing to demonise the only democracy in the region.
For instance, he could have penned a stiff letter to the Syrian government condemning the torture murder by its security forces of a cherubic 13-year-old boy, Hamza al-Khatib, snatched from his father during an anti-regime demonstration.
This was the point made by comedian Austen Tayshus, aka Sandy Gutman, to Lee Rhiannon on the ABC’s Q&A program this week, after the anti-Israel Greens senator revealed the glorious existence of the Tutu letter.
“Why aren’t you obsessed with Syria?” Gutman, the son of a Holocaust survivor, asked.
We could ask the same of Tutu. Where is his advocacy on behalf of a Syrian boy whose broken body was delivered back to his parents two weeks ago covered with cigarette burns, bullet holes and a wound where his penis used to be?
The one place in the Middle East where little Arab boys are safe is the one place Tutu is trying to destabilise.
Of course, Tutu has form on Israel. “Jews … think they have cornered the market on suffering,” he once said. They are “quick to yell anti-semitism [because of] an arrogance of power”.
Give that man a Sydney Peace Prize. Oh, wait, we already did.
Daily Telegraph, June 9, 2011
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Tayshus tells it like it is
AUSTEN Tayshus (also known as Vaucluse resident Alexander “Sandy” Gutman) has been touring constantly around the country for the past 30 years. And he is still in demand.
Many will know the comedian for his hit 1983 comic single ‘Australiana’ and, more recently, appearances on television shows such as Q&A.
He told LIVE his next project was a theatre show called Sucking On China’s Nipples.
But for now, fans can catch him at Wickham’s Albion Hotel Comedy House nights on the first Thursday of each month.
How have the comedy nights been going?
“They’ve been packed out. I’m the host and I’m introducing young, emerging comedy talent.
It’s sophisticated. It’s a dinner show in a beautiful-looking pub and the food is great.”
Is it important to you to nurture emerging talent?
“I’ve done a lot of that. I don’t like to blow my own trumpet but Akmal was one of my proteges, and another guy called Joe Avati, and Carl Barron – I also gave him a lot of help initially because I could see he had a lot of potential. I also helped Jimeoin out a bit.
A lot of them have become famous in their own right.”
What attracted you to comedy?
“I went to university and then film school, and I worked in the film industry for a while – it took me a while to find exactly what my calling was. A voice came to me in the middle of the night, I think it was Lenny Bruce saying [in broad American accent] “You should go into comedy, why not? What have you got to lose?
But seriously, it’s something I fell into and it’s very appropriate for me. It seems to fit me like a glove. I like that I’m in charge of what I do on stage, and as I’m a fairly provocative entertainer, I’ve had a very non-compromising approach to my work which is very satisfying in retrospect.
I’ve done what I do and I’ve upset a lot of people, which gives me great pleasure.”
From reviews I’ve read of your biography – ‘Austen Tayshus: The Merchant of Menace’ – I get the impression there are a few people who don’t talk to you any more?
“I think there are thousands of them.
I regard myself as an artist, and I’ve always been interested in exploring the outer edges of everything. I find the people I’m attracted to are those who push things as far as they can.
In stand-up comedy I like Bill Hicks, and Andy Kaufman – because he was very abstract. I like Barry Humphries because he’s a highly cultivated, highly intellectual sort of fellow and he takes no prisoners.
He’s probably more cautious than I am because I think he wanted to make a living.”
Did you hesitate at all about being the subject of a biography?
“Not at all, because I think it’s important to get the message out.
I didn’t interfere with it, I had to make the pledge that I wouldn’t get involved, so I didn’t read it until we launched it.
It’s very well written by Ross Fitzgerald and Richard Murphy, it’s objective and fairly honest, I think.”
How has your comedy changed since your early days?
“It has changed a lot, it has changed dramatically, because at the beginning I was very apprehensive.
It has become very improvisational.
I feel very adept now at just playing around on stage rather than relying totally on pre-scripted stuff.
It’s much looser and organic.
It’s much different from the original Austen Tayshus who was a scaredy-cat.”
Many people know you for ‘Australiana’, even after all these years. Does it still get a few laughs?
“It does from the new generation, because many of them are hearing it for the first time.”
Austen Tayshus hosts the Comedy House nights at the Albion Hotel on the first Thursday of the month. Tickets are $70 for dinner and the show. Book on 4962 2411.
The Newcastle Herald, 30 June 2011
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Interview with Anthony Frangi re Austen Tayshus, Merchant of Menace.
http://blogs.abc.net.au/queensland/2011/06/austen-tayshus-merchant-of-menace-ross-fitzgerald.html
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Mother and Austen at The Sydney Institute
Gerard Henderson’s The Sydney Institute yesterday hosted Margaret Gutman and her son Sandy accompanied by his alter ego, Austen Tayshus. Austen was quick to tell the Institute members and their guests that he is never invited back to anywhere he performs…but this time he was.
Henderson said that the presentation “Mother and Son – Living with Austen Tayshus” by the former president of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies and her comedian son was “a lot of fun” and he was quick to invite Margaret, Austen and Sandy to return to the Institute.
Margaret Gutman opened proceedings with an account of her son Sandy’s early years in New York where he was born. She told he meeting that her family had fled Poland and had settled in Sydney where she became a journalist. She received an internship from the United Nations and was posted to New York where she was to meet her husband Isaac who she described as “tall, dark and handsome with a wonderful sense of humour and a great raconteur”. She described Sandy as having been “a manly looking baby – no-one very took him for a girl”. she added: “Sandy was very inquisitive and had great lungs and could bellow with gusto.”
The Gutmans ceded to pressure from Margaret’s parents to return to Sydney where the Gutmans established their new home in Castlecrag.
Margaret Gutman told the meeting that her husband was a traditional Jew for whom practising Judaism had been “very important”. Isaac had spent four years as a slave labourer for the Germans “suffering hunger, brutal beatings and daily torments”. She said that his family had been wiped out by the Nazis and that Isaac had attributed his faith as having helped him through the Holocaust experience.
The family moved to Vaucluse to a home in which there was ”lots of story-telling, wise-cracking and laughter”. Gutman described her husband as having been “an impish man with an enormous collection of jokes”.
Puberty changed the shy Sandy who “lost interest in school and who became restless”. At the age of 15, Sandy became the Australian Jewish Bible champion winning a prize which would take him to Jerusalem to compete in the world finals. Two years later, Sandy Gutman was swept up in the time of the youth revolution and the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations and became a hippy. Isaac bought his son a movie camera and the man who was to become Austen Tayshus found a creative outlet in making movies. To make his parents happy, Sandy Gutman studied dentistry for two years before giving up and switching to Fine Arts.
The Australian Film and Television School had just been established and the young Sandy was accepted in its first intake of 25 students. He graduated from the school with a diploma in direction and cinema-photography.
Austen Tayshus joined the Gutman family in 1983 the year in which he made Australia’s most successful comedy record, “Australiana”. Tayshus was to put his movie-making skills to good work winning the Tropfest short film award for “Intolerance”, a film made on a Holocaust theme.
Margaret Gutman completed her address with a take on life with Sandy/Austen…”unconventional, often rocky, testing, unpredictable, challenging and never dull”.
Gerard Henderson welcomed Sandy to the podium.
Gutman’s address was a combination of personal feelings and a performance. Either way, the audience lapped it up.
He said: “I am going to give you an insight as to why I do this job, which is not the easiest of jobs and it must have been very difficult for my fairly conservative family to understand why I decided to become that crazy and push things right to the edge. A lot of people think that the aggression they see in my character is innate. The Holocaust has been part of my upbringing and has influenced my comedy in many different ways, subliminally and in many ways that I am not quite sure of myself.”
As he proceeded through his comedy routine, Gutman/Tayshus did enlighten his audience with flashes of his personal take on his career saying “everything leads to nowhere in my career”.
He said that what his career had developed into was “just being a nudnik comedian…and a comedian with a social conscience”.
Gerard Henderson asked Margaret Gutman how many times she had seen her son perform in a professional environment. She replied: “Several times but perhaps not as many as he would have liked.”
Ross Fitzgerald who authored the Austen Tayshus biography ‘The Merchant of Menace’ with Rick Murphy asked Margaret Gutman if she thought Tayshus’s life and work would benefit from therapy stressing that it was a serious question. She replied: “A serious question deserved a serious answer…but you won’t get a serious answer. Perhaps the right therapist would derive fun from working with Sandy.”
Margaret Gutman responded to a question about why her two sons are so different. Sandy leads the precarious life of a comedian. His younger brother Michael is a very successful executive working in the shopping centre business. But Margaret does not think they are so different. “They are both tall, very well built, good-looking and they’ve both got an excellent sense of humour. They’ve chosen different directions.” Sandy had a different take. “I was born nine years after my father was liberated from Bergen-Belsen. Unlike a lot of survivors he was very open about everything and I was interested in what he had to say. But I copped the lot and Michael was spared that. He also benefited from all the mistakes I made.”
Fellow comedian Rodney Marks asked Sandy Gutman: “What’s the relationship between you and Austen Tayshus and do you think Austen Tayshus is just one of Sandy’s characters?”
Gutman replied: “I’ve always thought of Austen as being an extension of myself. I’ve always believed that art imitates life and that life imitates art. I’ve always looked for the opportunity to cause trouble. Austen Tayshus is the troublemaker in me. I don’t know who Sandy is. Austen Tayshus is the larger than life Sandy who I use publicly to upset, insult, unsettle, challenge provoke and ensure that I never make one cent from this business.”
Gerard Henderson asked Margaret Gutman why people should buy the Sandy Gutman biography “The Merchant of Menace”. The answer was reinforced by author Ross Fitzgerald who said he firmly believed that Austan Tayshus and Barry Humphries shared the roles of being Australia’s two most significant comedians.
As J-Wire played back the tape of the presentation’s last ten minutes, Margaret Gutman’s non-stop laughter while listening to her son’s antics would certainly deny any hint of her tiring of his humour.
J-Wire July 6, 2011
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Austen powers
UNTIL Tuesday night, one thing Sandy Gutman (aka Austen Tayshus) hadn’t done in his career (apart from make friends with some of the young folk at Brisbane’s The Courier-Mail) was appear on stage with his mother.
This glaring oversight was addressed on Tuesday night at the Sydney Institute. Gutman the elder spoke of a Sandy who was born nine years after his father Isaac was liberated from Bergen-Belsen and who grew into a shy, tall, deep-voiced, inquisitive and extremely unpredictable child. Yes, shy.
For his part, Gutman the younger mused on the nature of German-Jewish relations (we’d quote him, but it’s the sort of gag that makes some people nervous) and announced that his next project was a musical comedy about the mining industry, tentatively titled Sucking on China’s Nipples.
Strewth, The Australian, July 7, 2011, p11.
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Biography hits a raw nerve with Austen Tayshus
The new biography on iconic Australian comedian Austen Tayshus has one particularly tough critic: its subject.
“I don’t like it,” Tayshus says, leaving a comedicly deliberate pause.
“No, I do like it. I think they’ve done a terrific job of putting a lot of stuff in there which is untrue.”
Austen Tayshus: Merchant of Menace by Ross Fitzgerald and Rick Murphy does have at least one positive review, from Tayshus’s mother, apparently.
The book explores the life of Tayshus, also known as Vaucluse resident Alexander “Sandy” Gutman, from his early years growing up with his holocaust survivor father through to his recent foray into federal politics running against opposition leader Tony Abbott for the Australian Sex Party.
Dropping his comedy act momentarily, Gutman praises the book for its insights.
“It’s a good historical perspective on what I’ve been doing and what and how I came to be the comedian I was,” he said.
Austin Tayshus made his most indelible mark on the Australian comedy scene in 1983 with his spoken word recording Australiana. He has since been a stand-up favourite.
Fitzgerald, a friend of Gutman, said Tayshus was a titan of Australian comedy, his only near equal a man in a pink wig.
“I believe that Austen Tayshus and Barry Humphries are Australia’s two greatest … living comedians,” Fitzgerald said.
“Not Barry Humphries so much,” Gutman adds.
Another serious moment, and Gutman expresses his praise for Humphries and his disdain for Australia’s current crop of comedians.
“I actually think he’s the best entertainer in the country, in comparison to the rest of the comedy galaxy in this country, well there is no comparison,” he said.
Fitzgerald says Gutman is strongly influenced by his father’s holocaust experience and, as a result, an aggressive adversary of authority and intolerance.
“I hope [readers] understand what a dangerous performer he is and what a subversive performer he is,” he said.
Gutman hadn’t seen the book before it was released, a proviso of Fitzgerald taking on the project. While it was hard to read about himself, he saw positives in the new novel.
“Ultimately it’s a good thing for my career, which is dying in the arse,” he said.
The Wentworth Courier, 11 Jun 2011
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Comedy with shtick, Austen Tayshus style
EVERYTHING about comedian Alexander “Sandy” Gutman (aka Austen Tayshus) is a dichotomy. In life, he is a tea-totalling, erudite intellectual, the father of two daughters – a far cry from his foul-mouthed, incendiary, dark-glasses-clad on-stage persona.
He has a love-hate relationship with his audiences, which he is famous for taunting – recently he made a Japanese audience member get on stage and apologise for World War II in exchange for a cessation of tsunamis and earthquakes – and simultaneously describes his hero Barry Humphries as the gold standard of Australian comedy and a “total snob”.
He’s as comfortable doing gigs in “toilets” – Gutman’s colourful description of the backwater pubs where he often plies his trade – as he is bewildering audiences at legendary comedy haunts in Los Angeles and New York.
On the surface, he is as Aussie as a Southern Cross tattoo, but his anger and cynicism bely his larrikinism and, unwittingly for most, inform his humour.
The son of a Holocaust survivor, Gutman’s split personality embodies, allegorically and also literally, the struggle of the second-generation survivor to assimilate. His shtick is, at its heart, outsider art.
“That’s why I’ve adopted the persona that I have [Austen Tayshus], a fairly aggressive persona, It’s a survival mechanism,” Gutman says of his alter ego.
“I’d go out into a beer barn full of idiots and that’s the way I learnt to do the job. I still do a lot of work in pubs and shitholes, I enjoyed it and now I can work in any milieu. I can work in front of Jewish crowds, I can work in front of intellectuals at universities and Jew-haters.”
Gutman has been performing this delicate balancing act for more than three decades, but far from tearing him asunder in some sort of Woody Allen-style existential crisis, he says his ability to easily reconcile the duality of yobbo and immigrant has given him the ability to work with all people and in the process become one of the most vaunted figures in Australian comedy.
“Most of the time when you’re working in Australia, if you’re working publicly, you work for f–k-wits,” the Sydney-based comedian says of his audience.
“But when I do the Jewish shows, and I’ve done hundreds of them, it’s like coming back to Shabbos dinner. I feel so comfortable and so familiar with the Jewish crowd because they understand chutzpah; it’s something that goes without explanation. When you’re working with the goyim, they don’t really know what that is.
“If I’ve got a smart crowd then it’s a much more interesting show. If it’s an idiot crowd then I’ve got to resort to old stuff.”
One of the golden oldies Gutman refers to is his 1983 smash hit Australiana, a spoken word piece full of puns written by Billy Birmingham of 12th Man fame that was the country’s top-selling single for eight consecutive weeks. In 1999, there was a follow-up single Footyana.
Gutman’s mother, Margaret, has been active in the Sydney Jewish community and in 1993 received an Order of Australia in the Queen’s Birthday honours for her communal work.
Gutman’s life is now the subject of a new biography, Merchant of Menace, co-written by author-broadcaster Ross Fitzgerald, who is emeritus professor of history and politics at Griffith University, and comedy writer Rick Murphy.
It was launched earlier this month at Sydney’s Jewish Museum, where Gutman saw it for the first time. “It ain’t easy, buddy,” Gutman says of reading a book about himself.
“But, you know, try stand-up for 30 years, that’s not the easiest job either, particularly in the toilets that I work in. But it’s also complimentary that somebody wants to write a book about you.”
The book includes amusing stories and events from interviews with prominent Australians who have worked or had dealings with Austen Tayshus, including Andrew Denton, Baz Luhrmann, Rodney Rude, Akmal Saleh, Wilbur Wilde, George Smilovici and Vince Sorrenti.
The cover of the book trumpets the high praise: “Australia’s most dangerous and subversive performer.”
It’s a fitting plaudit for a man whose incendiary, dissenting voice has endeared him to the Australian public, even if he does like to goad, make fun of and, at times, offend them.
Austen Tayshus: Merchant of Menace by Ross Fitzgerald and Rick Murphy, Hale & Iremonger, $29.95 (rrp).
Australian Jewish News, June 24 2011
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Mother and Son – Life with Austen Tayshus
25th Aug 2011 by Margaret Gutman
Margaret Gutman is a former executive director of the Jewish Board of Deputies in Sydney. She is also the mother of Australian comedian, Sandy Gutman, aka Austen Tayshus. Margaret Gutman’s late husband Isaac Gutman, Sandy’s father, was a holocaust survivor and his experiences during World War II profoundly affected Sandy Gutman’s growing up. On Tuesday 5 July 2011, in a Sydney first, Margaret Gutman and Sandy Gutman (aka Austen Tayshus) addressed The Sydney Institute. The occasion came in the wake of the publication of Ross Fitzgerald and Rick Murphy’s recently published biography of Sandy Gutman, titled Austen Tayshus – Merchant of Menace.
MOTHER AND SON – LIFE WITH SANDY GUTMAN (AKA AUSTEN TAYSHUS)
MARGARET GUTMAN
Alexander Jacob Gutman was born on 17 March, St Patricks Day, in New York City. He was a beautiful baby – long, lean and our first. Why was our son Sandy (as we called him) born in New York and not in Sydney? Well, my Polish parents were from Warsaw. With great foresight, my father understood that Hitler was unleashing a disaster for the Jews and decided to do everything possible to get his family out of Europe. He managed to get us visas and we arrived as refugees on the last ship through the Suez Canal before World War II. Most of our extended family that was left behind was murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust.
His voice was deep, sonorous and persuasive. We had the blind date and it was love at first sight.
Australia was a wonderful, peaceful haven. I finished school and university and embarked on a career in journalism. An internship in the public information division of the United Nations brought me to New York. This was a most exciting, challenging and interesting time for me. Several happy, busy months passed. Then one day, a friend asked me if I would agree to a blind date with “a very interesting man”. “Okay,” I said. “Let him call me and if I like the sound of his voice, I’ll meet him.” The call came – his voice was deep, sonorous and persuasive. We had the blind date and it was love at first sight. He was tall, dark, handsome, cultured – somewhat older than I, widely travelled, a great raconteur with a wonderful sense of humour. We were married about six months later. We found an apartment to rent on the West Side not far from Central Park and that was our first home till Sandy was born. Once we had a baby, we needed more space and moved to Jackson Heights, a more suburban area with several parks.
He liked to lie on his tummy propped up on his elbows, having a good look all around. He was very alert and inquisitive.
Sandy was a manly looking baby. No one ever took him for a girl! He had piercing brown eyes and a fuzz of blonde hair. I took great pride in taking him for walks in his pram where he liked to lie on his tummy propped up on his elbows, having a good look all around. He was very alert and inquisitive. He also had great lungs and could bellow with gusto!
I had left my job to be a full time mum. My husband Isaac was working for an international brokerage house in Wall Street. My parents now began urging us to move to Sydney so they could enjoy their first grandchild. New York is a fascinating city for sure but, when you’re raising children, Sydney has no equal. Of course, a move such as this presented the biggest challenge for my husband Isaac. He would have to start all over – but he agreed. We settled in a small cottage in Castlecrag among a lovely group of friendly and welcoming neighbours. I gave birth to our second son Michael and Sandy now had a sibling.
Sandy was a rather shy little boy.
Sandy was a rather shy little boy. He spoke early and well, liked books and listening to scary stories, many of which I had to make up. We inherited a day-dog, a cocker spaniel which lived a couple of doors away but visited from morning till dusk. Both children adored Sally the dog and shared their food, toys and my husband’s socks with her. My husband Isaac came from a family of well established Polish industrialists who were also traditional Jews. Practising Judaism was very important to him. He had spent four years as a slave labourer for the Germans suffering hunger, brutal beatings and daily torments. Virtually his whole family was murdered. He credited his strong faith with helping him survive the terrors of the Holocaust.
Sydney’s eastern suburbs were a larger centre of Jewish life in the 1960s than the North Shore where we were living. I found a house in Vaucluse. We moved to the east and joined the South Head Synagogue community. Isaac began to build a watch importing and distributing business, travelling extensively throughout Australia and overseas.
Alf Vockler at the Watsons Bay baths taught them to swim by throwing them in the deep end. Maybe that’s helped both their careers!
Michael was different from Sandy from the start. He was adventurous and an explorer of his environment. Both boys loved the sun and the sea. Alf Vockler at the Watsons Bay baths taught them to swim by throwing them in the deep end. Maybe that’s helped both their careers! There was lots of story-telling, wise-cracking and laughter in our home. My father – nicknamed “Mango” by the children – liked to join in. He had an impish sense of humour which was legendary and an enormous collection of jokes. It was amazing how he managed to always match the perfect funny anecdote to the occasion at hand.
Sandy was swept up in the youth revolt era.
Sandy’s puberty hit him and us with a capital P. The comparatively shy boy lost interest in school, became very argumentative and restless. My husband bought him an 8mm movie camera to give him a more acceptable creative outlet. Our house became regularly filled with Sandy’s friends making movies. Renee Geyer was one of the gang. My laundry was commandeered for film developing and many a sheet and tablecloth was ruined with chemicals.
Sandy was swept up in the youth revolt era and its demonstrations against the Vietnam War, the hippie phenomenon and the sexual revolution. He was searching for his place in all of this – it was very bewildering for us, his parents, and probably him too. A couple of years earlier, at 15, Sandy had become the Australian Jewish Bible champion. His prize was a trip to Jerusalem to compete in the World finals. Now, suddenly, our son was a hippie, obsessed with rock ‘n’ roll and probably even smoking pot.
We engaged a tutor to help Sandy with the HSC because we were scared he’d fail. Actually, he passed brilliantly and even won a Commonwealth scholarship. Again he was all over the place – almost impossible to guide regarding his future. He announced he’d study dentistry – to make us happy he thought. I couldn’t see restless Sandy as a dentist. Maybe a lawyer or an academic or even a film-maker, but a dentist? Hardly.
He struggled with dentistry for two years and then switched to fine arts. At this time the Australian film and TV school was set up and was calling for applicants. Hundreds of hopefuls from all over the country wanted to get in. Sandy applied and was accepted into the first intake of 25. Then he decided to move out of home. I thought he was too young even though there would be fewer tensions and arguments with him gone.
Sandy graduated from the film school with a diploma in direction and cinematography. Read the book for more details! In 1983, the Gutman family was joined by a new member – Austen Tayshus and his phenomenal national success with Australia. Still the biggest selling comedy single in Australian recording history. Lots of adventures and successes followed, including Sandy winning Tropfest with the film Intolerance, which has a Holocaust theme.
Cars toot and people call out, “Hi there Austen, how you’re going mate? How much can a Koala bear?”
When I walk along the street with Sandy it’s slow progress, not because I’m unfit, but because passers by stop and want to shake his hand and chat. Cars toot and people call out, “Hi there Austen, how you’re going mate? How much can a Koala bear?” He is an Aussie superstar with incredible instant recognition. So, life with Sandy, aka Austen Tayshus, has been unconventional, often rocky, testing, unpredictable, challenging, but never dull. And he has given me the joy of two gorgeous grand daughters, Isabella and Tallulah.
I am very proud of my son Sandy/Austen Tayshus and his life, struggles and successes. I am very proud that Ross Fitzgerald and Rick Murphy have put his life on record in a fascinating and respectful biography which is important for our family but also, I believe, for Australia. The last word belongs to the celebrated comic wit of James Thurber. “Boys,” he said, “are beyond the range of anyone’s sure understanding – at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years.”
Sandy Gutman’s (Austen Tayshus) address can be heard here.
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Still the great offender
STEPHEN BEVIS
Still the great offender
As one reviewer of a new biography about kamikaze comedian Austen Tayshus put it, he has burnt more bridges than the Chinese Red Army. Historian Ross Fitzgerald, co-author of the biography ‘The Merchant of Menace’, points out that farce and satire are not so well understood in Australia – which is one of many reasons the extreme act of Austen Tayshus, aka Alexander “Sandy” Gutman, is not fully appreciated.
“Barry Humphries and Sandy Gutman are Australia’s two most talented, living comedians,” Fitzgerald tells anyone who cares to listen. He and co-writer, the WA-based Rick Murphy, wrote the book on the condition that Gutman had no editorial input or any right of veto.
As their book notes, Gutman’s splenetic career has largely been driven by his ongoing, obsessive anger as the son of a migrant Polish Jewish Holocaust survivor.
Again and again, he hacks into his audiences, putting ignorance, intolerance, religious and political dogma, and cultural shibboleths to the sword of his razor-sharp tongue.
It is nearly 30 years since Tayshus touched the collective chord with Australiana, the pun-laden riff (“How much can a koala bear?”) which was the world’s first spoken-word comedy No. 1 and the biggest-selling Australian single of all time.
Fitzgerald and Murphy track Gutman’s career from the early collaborations with Billy Birmingham through his drug excesses, bankruptcy and the decision to straighten out and become a vegetarian.
The man himself winds up a WA tour in Perth tonight and says the book has been a revelation for those who had him pinned as a one-hit wonder.
While stand-up has been Gutman’s bread and butter (he is a veteran of more than 10,000 shows), the film-school graduate has won Tropfest for his short film Intolerance and appeared in everything from Neil Armfield’s production of ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ to Phillip Noyce’s film ‘Sliver’, where he (naturally) upset star Sharon Stone on set.
He says he wants to expand his scope further. “With the maturity that I have now, having done so many shows and from my life experience from having been married, divorced and bringing up my two daughters, the realisation is that I really want to move into theatre, into a more sophisticated arena where my humour is more appreciated.”
As Tayshus, he appears to have destroyed everything he touched. He got knocked out on stage after abusing his own Hell’s Angel security guard and was locked up on a cruise ship only one line into what would have been a lucrative gig. His ability to offend those who might further his career is legendary.
“Having had huge success with (Australiana) and being forced into that rock’n'roll milieu and having to develop a fairly aggressive persona to survive, I am now sick and tired of being punched and hassled by fairly much the yobbo market,” Gutman says.
The title of his next project, a planned theatre show called ‘Sucking on China’s Nipples’, sounds as pointed as anything he has done. Directed by Neill Gladwin and co-written with Norman Gunston and Paul Hogan writer Bill Harding, its premise is that all his writing has been outsourced to a team from China.
“My Chinese writing team has saved me from the darkness of the Holocaust much as the Chinese have saved Australia from bankruptcy,” he says.
“I have got 50 Chinese writers who were all at Tiananmen Square and are all ex-newsagents and are now acrobats who do a pyramid act in my show.”
Of course, it’s never clear where the joke begins and ends with Tayshus.
“That’s always a problem with me, my friend.”
‘Austen Tayshus: Merchant of Menace’ by Ross Fitzgerald and Rick Murphy (Hale & Iremonger, $29.95) is out now. Austen Tayshus performs tonight at Friends Restaurant, the Hyatt.
The West Australian September 14, 2011
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He’s Our Star
We read in the estimable diary column in The Australian newspaper – it’s called Strewth, one of the lesser adjectives commonly heard in newspaper offices – that historian Ross Fitzgerald, a long-time friend of Hector (well, the guy who ghost-writes for the lazy buzzard at least) may soon be immortalising himself on the little screen as well as in print.
Strewth reported on September 28 that fans of Larry David and Austen Tayshus (they’re Aussie icons; that’s all you need to know) would be pleased to hear of a new project. Fitzgerald, columnist with ‘The Australian and co-author with Rick Murphy of the recent biography on Austen Tayshus (Sandy Gutman to his parents) titled Merchant of Menace, tells Strewth a pilot for a TV series based on the book is in the pipeline, starring the man many call the most controversial performer in Australia.
“The show will be like Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, partly scripted but much improvised,” Fitzgerald told Strewth. “Five minutes of each episode will involve Sandy seeing a real female therapist who specialises in treating children of Holocaust survivors.” The working title is Standup. Plans are also being made for Gutman to play the character Grafton Everest in a TV series based on Fitzgerald’s novel ‘Fools’ Paradise’, co-authored with Trevor Jordan.
Fitzgerald is a Bali regular. He and his wife Lyndal Moor prefer the sybaritic delights of Ubud to those offered elsewhere on the island.
HECTOR’S DIARY, The Bali Advertiser, October 5, 2011
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I’ve just read the book you co-authored about Austen Tayshus. It is fascinating and a pretty masterful treatment of a most intractable subject. I know his mother pretty well over the years. He sort of scared me – that much aggression is enough to put me off his humour. I sensed the psychosis driving his performance, and I thought ‘better get some help, young man’.
I can’t say it’s been the most cheery book, but absolutely compelling, unputdownable and to be highly recommended.
I thought only you would be able to take the subject on – I sense your profound understanding of a manic personality driven by some deep demons.
So, thank you.
Rachael
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