I felt like I’d really made it in the website game when I discovered 13 spam comments on one of my really old posts yesterday. I was disappointed when I found out they weren’t real comments, but then came to the conclusion they were almost as good … even though my deleting finger was working overtime. They were for some kind of Google search - very boring. Guess you’ve really made it when the porn sites start spamming.

Because I need a tenuous link to get to it, I’m going to segue into my most recent Google vanity search, which was “Between the Teeth”. Not dental hygiene, or some kind of dodgy advice column, but a television show I co-hosted when I was sixteen, and wearing day of the week underwear with super short lurex mini skirts. I think this show would have the all time record for least watched, and least known. The ABC in Hobart (where it was shot back in the 80’s) erased all the tapes, which I guess tells you exactly what high quality tv it was. For nine months it aired on Saturday morning before Beatbox, and when we were finally axed, our budget was given to The Factory and Tania Lacey became famous instead of me. She had a lot more talent, but at the time I wasn’t quite so chilled out about it.

So the Google search was quite depressing. I was hoping to find some crazed fan with a website dedicated to the show, but instead found this. If you scroll down to paragraph ten (!), you’ll see BTT mentioned last in a long line of shows. At least someone remembered …

My memories of the show are (in no particular order)

Throwing ice from the ABC canteen windows towards Masons going to their temple meeting next door. We weren’t aiming at them … just near them

Developing a love of Cascade Pale Ale at the pub over the road

My co-host Paul having chemotherapy for several months, and ad-libbing some mad hair tearing scene with real hair tearing

Having to do the dodgiest links to the dodgiest videos - like Bruce Willis and the Pointer Sisters’ cover of “Respect Yourself”

The only cool song we played was “Weirdo Libido” by the Lime Spiders, but only because it was on the soundtrack to Young Einstein.

Dry ice smoke everywhere, since that was all the props budget could pay for

My mother embarking on a fantastic campaign to publicise the show by writing to the Mercury and pretending to be a young man who was desperately in love with me. I didn’t realise until she told me later on, and was quite disappointed

Finishing work at 3am every Friday and never making it to my double religious studies class, even though my teacher was probably the coolest guy at Hobart College

And so ended my career as on air talent (and I use the phrase extremely loosely). A few years ago I was given one of the only existing copies of an episode of the show, and it was bad. Not even funny bad. At one point I was obviously looking at the director, who must’ve been miming “smile” for five minutes before I understood what to do. He wasn’t a great director, and I wasn’t a child acting prodigy.

So there’s the whole nine months encapsulated in one post, and clearly one of the reasons I ended up behind the scenes in TV - although there was an episode of Blue Heelers where my photograph was used as an IRA terrorist who’d been murdered by the British army, but all I had to do was look crazy and in love. I managed the crazy part quite easily …

Today I’m loving: managing to hold a fifteen kilo weight above my head during step ups