Roy & HG is an
AustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n comedy duo, comprising
Greig Pickhaveralt=Greig Pickhaver|thumb|In May 2010Greig Pickhaver AM is an actor, comedian and writer, who forms one half of the Australian sports comedy duo Roy and HG...
in the role of "H [Harry] G Nelson" and
John DoyleJohn Partick Doyle AM is an award-winning Australian actor, writer, radio presenter and comedian.-Early life:Doyle was born in Lithgow, New South Wales in 1953 into a music-loving, Catholic household with three sisters and a brother. His mother was a business woman and father a railway fettler...
as "'Rampaging' Roy Slaven". Their act is an affectionate but irreverent parody of Australia's obsession with sport. Their characters based on archetypes in sports journalism: Nelson the excitable announcer, Slaven the retired sportsman turned expert commentator. In his 1996 book
Petrol, Bait, Ammo & Ice, Nelson (aka Pickhaver) summarised the duo's comedic style as "making the serious trivial and the trivial serious".
Radio
Doyle and Pickhaver wrote and hosted the live, improvised, and satirical radio program
This Sporting LifeThis Sporting Life was a culturally iconic Triple J radio comedy programme, created by award-winning actor-writer-comedians John Doyle and Greig Pickhaver, who performed as their characters Roy and HG. Broadcast from 1986 to 2008, it was one of the longest-running, most popular and most successful...
on
Triple Jtriple j is a nationally networked Australian radio station intended to appeal to listeners between the ages of 18 and 30. The government-funded station is a division of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation...
from 1986 to 2008. They also broadcast annual live commentaries of the
NRLThe National Rugby League is the top league of professional rugby league football clubs in Australasia. The NRL's main competition, called the Telstra Premiership , is contested by sixteen teams, fifteen of which are based in Australia with one based in New Zealand...
and
AFLAustralian rules football, officially known as Australian football, also called football, Aussie rules or footy is a sport played between two teams of 22 players on either...
grand finalsGrand Final is a predominantly Australian sport term used to describe a match that decides a league champion.It originated in Victoria and South Australia and has become specifically significant Australian culture...
(dubbed the
Festival of the Boot, Parts I and II) and the
Melbourne CupThe Melbourne Cup is Australia's major Thoroughbred horse race. Marketed as "the race that stops a nation", it is a 3,200 metre race for three-year-olds and over. It is the richest "two-mile" handicap in the world, and one of the richest turf races...
. Commentaries for all three matches of the annual
rugby leagueRugby league football, usually called rugby league, is a full contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular grass field. One of the two codes of rugby football, it originated in England in 1895 by a split from Rugby Football Union over paying players...
State of OriginState of Origin is an annual best of three series of rugby league football matches contested by the Maroons and the Blues, who represent the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales respectively...
series are also broadcast (
main article: Roy and HG's State of Origin commentaryBroadcast on the Triple J radio station to simulcast with the annual three-game rugby league State of Origin series, Australian comedians Roy and HG provide a commentary of the match at hand...
), and they have also broadcast live commentaries of other major events, including the Bicentennial celebrations on 26 January 1988 and the 2007 Australian federal election (
Indecision 07). They also provided a half-hour coverage of the 2008 Beijing Olympics every weekday under the guise of the
Golden Ring Show.
They left Triple J in 2008 and, from 12 January 2009, presented the drive-time program
The Life on the
Triple MThe Triple M Network is an active rock radio network in Australia owned by media company Austereo, who also own the Today Network.- History :...
network, on Mondays and Fridays.
From 2011, Roy & HG will have one show on Friday Drive with 'The Life'
ABC
After several years on radio, Roy and HG transferred the radio show's format to a series of
ABCThe Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
television shows, including
Blah Blah BlahBlah Blah Blah was a 1988 comedy television show starring Andrew Denton, broadcast on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The show is most notable for the fact that it began the television careers of many Australian performers including Flacco and Roy & HG...
(1988) (where they were only seen in silhouette),
This Sporting Life (1993), the Logie award-winning
Club BuggeryClub Buggery is the title of an Australian television series of the 1990s. It was created and performed by Australian comedy duo Roy and HG and broadcast on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation network in 1996 and 1997.-Development:The series was an offshoot the duo's long-running,...
(1995–97) and its successor
The Channel Nine Show (1998),
Planet Norwich (1998; made in the UK) and
The Memphis Trousers Half-Hour (2005; taped in Sydney but performed as if broadcast from America).
Seven Network
After transferring to the commercial
Seven NetworkThe Seven Network is an Australian television network owned by Seven West Media Limited. It dates back to 4 November 1956, when the first stations on the VHF7 frequency were established in Melbourne and Sydney.It is currently the second largest network in the country in terms of population reach...
in the late 1990s, they presented
Win Roy & H.G.'s Money (2000), an unsuccessful adaptation of the US hit
Win Ben Stein's MoneyWin Ben Stein's Money is an American television game show that ran from July 28, 1997 to January 31, 2003 on the Comedy Central cable network with episodes airing until May 8, 2003. It featured three contestants who competed in a general knowledge quiz contest to win the grand prize of $5,000 from...
. They later succeeded with higher-rating shows
The Monday Dump and
The Nation Dumps.
Their biggest hit was undoubtedly their top-rating commentary-interview television program
The Dream with Roy and HGThe Dream with Roy and HG was a sports/comedy talk show, broadcast every night during the Sydney 2000, Salt Lake 2002 and Athens 2004 Olympics, presented by Australian comedy duo Roy and HG....
(from the
Sydney 2000 OlympicsThe Sydney 2000 Summer Olympic Games or the Millennium Games/Games of the New Millennium, officially known as the Games of the XXVII Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was celebrated between 15 September and 1 October 2000 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia...
), featuring their own special outlook on the event. This was followed by three spinoffs -
The Ice Dream (from the
2002 Salt Lake City Winter OlympicsThe 2002 Winter Olympics, officially the XIX Olympic Winter Games, were a winter multi-sport event that was celebrated in February 2002 in and around Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. Approximately 2,400 athletes from 77 nations participated in 78 events in fifteen disciplines, held throughout...
),
The Cream (from the 2003 Rugby World Cup), and more recently
The Dream again for the
Athens 2004 OlympicsThe 2004 Summer Olympic Games, officially known as the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad, was a premier international multi-sport event held in Athens, Greece from August 13 to August 29, 2004 with the motto Welcome Home. 10,625 athletes competed, some 600 more than expected, accompanied by 5,501 team...
. During the Ice Dream they launched a bid for the Winter Olympics to be held at Smiggin Holes, in the humorous
Smiggin Holes 2010 Winter Olympic bidThe Smiggin Holes 2010 Winter Olympic bid was a joke campaign initiated by Australian comedians Roy and HG to bring the 2010 Winter Olympics to the tiny and little-known village of Smiggin Holes, part of the Perisher Blue ski resort, in New South Wales, Australia...
with suggested slogans "Unleash the Mighty Mongrel", "Winter Wonder Down Under" and "If you've got the poles, we've got the holes.".
A
Dream style coverage of the
2006 FIFA World CupThe 2006 FIFA World Cup was the 18th FIFA World Cup, the quadrennial international football world championship tournament. It was held from 9 June to 9 July 2006 in Germany, which won the right to host the event in July 2000. Teams representing 198 national football associations from all six...
, called the
Dribble mit HG und Roy was streamed via the Internet.
Roy and HG were not selected by Channel Seven to cover the Beijing Olympics because of security concerns and the belief by Channel Seven management that the style of their coverage - going to air live following a day's events - would not have suited Australian audiences given Australia's time zones. Instead, a daily radio programme,
The Golden Ring Show, was broadcast
on Triple J, with Roy styled as "Crouching Tiger" and H.G. as "the Hidden Dragon".
Memphis Trousers
In 2005, they presented
The Memphis Trousers Half Hour, a TV show they claimed was recorded in different American cities such as Baltimore or
AlbuquerqueAlbuquerque is the largest city in the state of New Mexico, United States. It is the county seat of Bernalillo County and is situated in the central part of the state, straddling the Rio Grande. The city population was 545,852 as of the 2010 Census and ranks as the 32nd-largest city in the U.S. As...
, ensuring that 'Australia is the flavour of the month, every month'. The show screened weekly on the
ABCThe Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
on Saturday nights and was named after an incident in which former Australian prime minister
Malcolm FraserJohn Malcolm Fraser AC, CH, GCL, PC is a former Australian Liberal Party politician who was the 22nd Prime Minister of Australia. He came to power in the 1975 election following the dismissal of the Whitlam Labor government, in which he played a key role...
lost his trousers in a
MemphisMemphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....
hotel.
The show, seemingly filmed in America, was in fact filmed entirely in Sydney. The format was a parody of American talk shows and pretended to present Americans with new 'facts' about Australia.
Awards and nominations
| Year & Ceremony |
For |
Award |
Result |
| 1997 Logie Awards The 39th Annual TV Week Logie Awards were presented on Sunday 18 May 1997 at Crown Casino in Melbourne and broadcast on the Nine Network. Daryl Somers from Hey Hey It's Saturday was the Master of Ceremonies for the second year in a row...
|
Club Buggery |
Most Outstanding Achievement In Comedy |
Won |
| 1997 Logie Awards |
Club Buggery |
Most Popular Comedy Program |
Nominated |
| 1998 Logie Awards The 40th Annual TV Week Logie Awards were presented on Sunday 19 April 1998 at Crown Casino in Melbourne and broadcast on the Nine Network. Daryl Somers from Hey Hey It's Saturday was the Master of Ceremonies for the third year in a row...
|
Club Buggery |
Most Outstanding Achievement In Comedy |
Nominated |
| 2001 Logie Awards The 43rd Annual TV Week Logie Awards were presented on Sunday 22 April 2001 at Crown Casino in Melbourne and broadcast on the Nine Network. Shaun Micallef from the ABC was the Master of Ceremonies...
|
The Dream with Roy and HG |
Most Popular Sports Program |
Won |
| 2001 Logie Awards The 43rd Annual TV Week Logie Awards were presented on Sunday 22 April 2001 at Crown Casino in Melbourne and broadcast on the Nine Network. Shaun Micallef from the ABC was the Master of Ceremonies...
|
The Dream with Roy and HG |
Most Outstanding Comedy Program |
Nominated |
| 2002 Logie Awards The 44th Annual TV Week Logie Awards were presented on Sunday 28 April 2002 at Crown Casino in Melbourne and broadcast on the Nine Network. Wendy Harmer from the Sydney radio station 2Day FM was the Master of Ceremonies.The ratings of the 2002 logie awards averaged around 1,865,000 and ranked at #5...
|
The Monday Dump |
Most Popular Sports Program |
Nominated |
| 2002 Logie Awards The 44th Annual TV Week Logie Awards were presented on Sunday 28 April 2002 at Crown Casino in Melbourne and broadcast on the Nine Network. Wendy Harmer from the Sydney radio station 2Day FM was the Master of Ceremonies.The ratings of the 2002 logie awards averaged around 1,865,000 and ranked at #5...
|
The Monday Dump |
Most Popular Sports Program |
Nominated |
| 2003 Australian Comedy Awards |
17 years of radio & television work |
Outstanding Performers |
Won |
| 2003 Australian Comedy Awards |
17 years of radio work |
Outstanding Networked Radio Comedy Performance |
Won |
| 2003 Logie Awards The 45th Annual TV Week Logie Awards were presented on Sunday 11 May 2003 at Crown Casino in Melbourne and broadcast on the Nine Network. Eddie McGuire from the Nine Network was all Master of Ceremonies...
|
The Ice Dream |
Most Outstanding Comedy Program |
Nominated |
| 2003 Logie Awards The 45th Annual TV Week Logie Awards were presented on Sunday 11 May 2003 at Crown Casino in Melbourne and broadcast on the Nine Network. Eddie McGuire from the Nine Network was all Master of Ceremonies...
|
The Monday Dump |
Most Popular Sports Program |
Nominated |
| 2004 Logie Awards The 46th Annual TV Week Logie Awards were presented on Sunday, 18 April 2004 at Crown Casino in Melbourne and broadcast on the Nine Network. Eddie McGuire presided as Master of Ceremonies for the second year in a row, and the awards featured special guest Mel Brooks...
|
The Cream with Roy and HG |
Most Popular Sports Program |
Nominated |
| 2005 Logie Awards The 47th Annual TV Week Logie Awards were presented on Sunday 1 May 2005 at Crown Casino in Melbourne and broadcast on the Nine Network. In an historic first Andrew O'Keefe from the Seven Network, Eddie McGuire from the Nine Network and Rove McManus from Network Ten were all Master of Ceremonies...
|
The Dream in Athens |
Most Popular Sports Program |
Nominated |
Published works
- 1989: Pants off, this sporting life, by Roy Slaven and H.G. Nelson
- 1993: Tool talk and wise cracks with Roy and HG (sound recording)
- 1995: Roy & HG present Allan Border
Allan Robert Border AO is a former Australian cricketer. A batsman, Border was for many years the captain of the Australian team. His playing nickname was "A.B.". He played 156 Test matches in his career, a record until it was passed by fellow Australian Steve Waugh...
: cricket's first saint (sound recording)
- 1996: Petrol, bait, ammo & ice, by H.G. Nelson, with a foreword by Roy Slaven; illustrated by Reg Mombassa
Reg Mombassa is the pseudonym of Chris O'Doherty, a New Zealand born artist and musician. Resident in Australia, he is as well known there for his musical exploits — founder and former member of the popular Australian band Mental As Anything and member of Dog Trumpet - as he is for his art...
- 2000: The dream with Roy and H. G: the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, (DVDs)
Influence on artists in other media
In 2001 a portrait of Roy and HG by visual artist
Paul NewtonPaul Newton, Australian artist who has twice won the Packing Room award at the Archibald Prize. He won in 1996 with a portrait of announcer John Laws, and again in 2001 with a portrait of characters Roy Slaven and HG Nelson, which also won the people's choice award...
won the Packing Room award and the People's Choice award at the
Archibald PrizeThe Archibald Prize is regarded as the most important portraiture prize in Australia. It was first awarded in 1921 after a bequest from J. F. Archibald, the editor of The Bulletin who died in 1919...
.
External links