The voice that filled Australian lounge rooms
By Debi Enker
JOHN BLACKMAN: 1947 – 2024
For a few heady decades, John Blackman was The Voice, widely heard on TV and radio but not seen. Once described as being “as Melbourne as the MCG”, Blackman and his co-host, Bruce Mansfield, dominated breakfast radio for five years in the 1980s with their 3AW show.
John Blackman with his Hey Hey It’s Saturday alter ego, Dickie Knee.
At the same time, Blackman, who has died at the age of 76 after spending years battling cancer, provided the voice and the impudent spirit of Dickie Knee, the puppet that featured on Channel Nine’s popular national variety show Hey Hey It’s Saturday.
A polystyrene ball sitting on a stick, Dickie appeared on screen as a mop of curly black hair topped by a blue peaked cap. He would pop up from the bottom of the frame, cheekily riffing on the proceedings, and became a key feature of the show.
The man affectionately known as “Blackers” personified a different era in media – a blokier, more boisterous time when a clique of influential male radio and TV personalities dominated. In the realm of comedy, in particular, aspects of their preferred style of humour – which featured, for example, gags about people’s appearances, impediments or ethnicity – wouldn’t be acceptable today. But those were different times and Blackman, with his lightning-quick wit, larrikin vitality and resonant baritone, played to an appreciative audience.
He described his Hey Hey humour as “naughty”, maintaining that “if you make a joke, you’ll always offend someone”, although he added that his ground rule was never to be malicious. “I’m a comedy sniper, just waiting for my chance to go ‘bang’,” he said of his role.
Unapologetic even when his words provoked controversy, Blackman was driven by a relentless work ethic, a boy from working-class origins in Mount Waverley who was proud of his status, his Mercedes and his Toorak home.
He started work when he was eight, doing two paper rounds and, as a teenager, had a weekend job at a golf course. He left school in year 10 (then known as form four) at the age of 16 to work as a customs agent for an import business. To pay the rent on his Hawthorn flat, he also cleaned offices before and after work.
He credited his facility with a quick comic comeback to being bullied at primary school. He wore glasses from the age of eight and was seen at his state school as a “wimp”, explaining that “the easiest way of avoiding getting bashed up was to make the bullies laugh”.
He initially saw sales as a good career option, but while he was on the road hawking his wares, he heard ads for radio school and thought that being an announcer was “not a bad living”.
His radio career began at 2GN in Goulburn in 1969. He then bounced around, doing what he later referred to as his apprenticeship, with stints at 2CA in Canberra, before returning to Melbourne for the night shift at 3AW, followed by a breakfast show at 3AK.
In 1977, there was a short stint at Sydney’s 2UE, where he said he “failed miserably”. However, his time in the Harbour City proved formative as he listened to John Laws and said that he realised the secret of his success. “It is because he takes risks with his humour,” Blackman observed. “He doesn’t worry about offending people; his main aim is to be entertaining.” That philosophy subsequently shaped Blackman’s style.
Blackman hamming it up in his familiar place in front of the microphone at Melbourne radio station 3AW.
He hit the jackpot when he moved back to Melbourne and rejoined 3AW, partnering with Bruce Mansfield. His controversial 1986 defection from 3AW split the top-rating team when he left to follow station manager Brian White in his efforts to establish a Melbourne-Sydney network on a newly reshaped 3AK. Blackman believed his listeners would follow him, but the move proved ill-fated for him and the station. A related spat involving some of Blackman’s former colleagues erupted and was dubbed “Melbourne’s radio wars”, with a bitter slanging match spilling into the public arena.
Blackman, however, was unapologetic about changing stations and radio partners: “Anybody who works with me shouldn’t think it is a job for life. This is not the public service.” Yet he later described the move as “the most stupid decision I ever made”, and 1986 as “the worst year in my life” because, in addition to the death of his father, he was the subject of a tax audit that resulted in him having to sell his house. “Every cent I made since I was eight years old was gone,” he said. To cap it off, he was sacked by 3AK.
Blackman with Hey Hey co-stars Jacki MacDonald, Daryl Somers and Ossie Ostrich in 1985.Credit: Channel Nine
Alongside his radio career, Blackman became a part-time booth announcer at Nine, voicing commercials and announcing prizes and public service messages. “I’ve always been a workaholic,” he noted.
He was rostered on one Saturday morning in 1974, when a young man and a large ostrich puppet were recording a cartoon show. The host, Daryl Somers, threw him a line, Blackman batted it back with a gag and an enduring relationship was born.
Although he began as a voice-over man, he was soon supplying a range of characters as the show grew from a quirky weekend morning offering for kids into a national prime-time phenomenon. Blackman said that he thought it should be called Let’s Break Daryl Up, because getting Somers to laugh was “the aim of the show for me”.
His role was to insert himself vocally into the proceedings and to provide gags that added to the fun. While he developed a range of characters, the most famous one got his name when Somers injured his leg and complained that he had “a dickie knee”. Blackman seized upon it as a character name, later registering it with the patent office. In that period, he also worked as a newsreader and appeared on a number of quiz and variety shows.
John Blackman and his wife, Cecile.Credit: John Woudstra
After a marriage at the age of 19 that lasted five years, Blackman met Cecile at a party in Canberra in 1970, saying later: “It was almost love at first sight.” They married in 1972 and their daughter, Tiffany, was born prematurely in 1974. The oxygen treatment required to keep her alive was subsequently revealed to have irreparably damaged her vision.
After the failure of the 3AK networking experiment, Blackman worked at various Melbourne radio stations, including 3UZ, Magic and then back at 3AK, as well as at Triple M in Adelaide. “I have been through more stations than the Southern Aurora,” he reflected. “I love the medium. I call it a medium because it’s very rare when it’s well done.”
Credit: Matt Golding
Hey Hey, which became Australia’s most successful variety show, was axed at the end of 1999, with Nine’s executives believing its time had finally come after a marathon 28-year run. It returned in 2009 for two well-received reunion specials, prompting a new season in 2010.
However, its vaudevillian brand of humour didn’t age well and the wave of nostalgia that greeted the specials didn’t flow through to the subsequent series as it stuck steadfastly to the style and tone that had once made it a national attraction.
The show’s legacy was tarnished in 2021 when the Malaysian-born singer Kamahl, who had been a regular guest on Hey Hey, said he had been humiliated by the racist jokes made on air at the time at his expense.
Blackman did his own reputation no favours when he responded defensively on Twitter, saying that Kamahl was “shooting Bambi (or fish in barrel)” and he should have spoken up about the racism at the time. “Goodness me Kamahl,” Blackman wrote. “37 years and you’re still humiliated”.
When the radio work petered out, Blackman trained as a real estate agent and briefly worked as one, but gave it up, saying: “After six weeks of standing around empty apartments, I realised I wasn’t really cut out for it.”
He kept busy hosting corporate functions and launching a wellness podcast, If Pain Persists, in 2016. At that stage, he explained that he was focusing on his health and fitness, with the two-pack-a-day smoker quitting cigarettes and alcohol, running daily and pursuing his passion for golf.
John Blackman discussed his cancer battle on A Current Affair.Credit: Nine
After a seizure in 2007, Blackman had a brain tumour removed and in 2018, he was diagnosed with cancer: an aggressive basal-cell carcinoma on his chin had spread to his jaw. He underwent surgery to remove his lower jaw, replacing it with bone taken from his leg.
In mid-2022, he announced a new diagnosis of bone cancer at the top of his head. After surgery in May, he was scheduled to start radiotherapy.
The man who made his mark on radio and television described himself as an “opportunist humourist”, and he’ll be remembered as one of the sharpest wits in the business.
He is survived by his wife, Cecile, and daughter, Tiffany.
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