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 …

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 …

WHAT came to be known as the Australian Labor Party was formed in 1891 and by December 1, 1899, Queensland had the first Labor government in the world. Led by Anderson Dawson from the dual electorate of Charters Towers, it lasted only a week but it gave the ALP a valuable opportunity to get the dirt on the conservatives by examining previous governments’ files.
By April 27, 1904, the party’s progress was confirmed by the installation of the world’s first national Labor government. Led by Chilean-born J. C. (Chris) Watson, …

After briefly living behind the police station in the working-class Sydney suburb of Redfern, Francis Michael Farrell, born in 1916, was brought up in the ethnic melting pot that was Marrickville.
Named after St Francis of Assisi, Farrell was a devout Roman Catholic of distinctly Irish heritage. The future infamous Sydney policeman and legendary captain of the Newtown rugby league team gained his nickname from his habit, as a teenager who often walked barefoot, of picking up discarded cigarette butts, or bumpers, which he broke open, using the tobacco to make his own cigarettes. Indeed, throughout his …

THIS unique investigation of Sydney’s highly diverse Aboriginal past draws on the latest historical, archaeological, geological,environmental and linguistic research.
It also incorporates some oral evidence of present-day indigenous peoples although, wisely, this source of information has not been used extensively.
First published in 2002 and now greatly updated and revised, this superbly illustrated history of Aboriginal occupation of the Sydney region until the 1820s is a labour of love. Indeed, most of the more or less contemporary coloured photographs were taken by the author herself.
Currently principal research archaeologist in the anthropology unit …

THE much-maligned Bounty captain and colonial governor was not such a tyrant after all.
In the main, William Bligh, who joined the British navy at the age of seven, has had a bad press in Australia. In particular, Bligh has often been portrayed as a martinet when he was governor of NSW. Earlier in his career he was thought of as a cruel disciplinarian.
Despite Bligh’s foul language and fiery temper, Rob Mundle makes clear that Bligh delivered far fewer floggings than many of his contemporaries, including Captain James Cook, with whom …