Author: Stuart McCullough

WWLMD? All my life, I have tried to live up to a certain standard as if an indelible code has been forever imprinted on my soul. Sure, you can choose to float through this world like a twig in a flooded gutter or you can take a stand and actually believe in something. I, for one, have pledged my allegiance to a way of living that has at its heart certain principles – gallantry, nobility and high quality stunt-work. Is it a cult? Perhaps. Is it an organized religion? There’s nothing organized about it. It is, in fact, a simple question that has guided me through my life so far. That question is: WWLMD? Or, to set it out in full – what would Lee Majors do?
Continue reading “The Lee Majors’ Guide to Good Housekeeping”

I have no idea what we were thinking. Neither of us had started the day declaring that we needed to find and purchase the worst piece of art in the known universe. Particularly one that featured as its subject that most mysterious and mythical of creatures: the frog. But by the time the sun had been swallowed by the earth, we had done exactly that. I can only attribute our decision to part with an amount of money in exchange for a painting that neither of us liked to look at, much less wanted to own, as being the result of panic on my part.
Continue reading “Frog Day Afternoon: Painting Myself Into a Corner”

There are just two things in this world I can’t stand: intolerance and the left handed. I just know they’re out there; living their left-handed lives, oblivious to the simmering contempt in which I hold them. It fairly sends a chill down my spine to think that I may well pass these mutants on the street without so much as realizing it. Sometimes I secretly suspect that they’re planning to gang up on me, to give me the beating of my life, albeit using the wrong hand.
Continue reading “Pride and Extreme Prejudice”

It was only a matter of time. When you’re super-famous, it’s almost inevitable that you’ll end up flying a little too high, a little too close to the sun. Most of us would end up getting burned eventually. But if you happen to be a banana, you also run a serious risk of turning brown well before your time. The constant adulation from adoring fans, the extreme wealth, the red carpets ­– it’s bound to get to you eventually. When ABC announced that Bananas in Pyjamas would not be renewed, reference was made to revenue issues. This, quite frankly, ignores the fact that B1 and B2 have been out of control for some time now.
Continue reading “Bananadrama: Why B1 and B2 Had To Go”

There are two versions of me. The first is cultured, sophisticated and watches documentaries on SBS or ABC if anything at all, preferring instead to read the works of Nietzsche in the original German whilst listening to the collected works of Rachmaninov. The second, however, is uglier and far closer to the truth. This is the individual who would gladly watch a fly crawl across a wall so long as it was televised five nights a week and included a chance for a phone vote. There’s no easy way to say it: reality television has made me an imbecile.
Continue reading “Help! Reality television has taken control of my life.”

I could have been anything. Doctor, fireman, semi-professional pig-wrangler – you name it. Had I half a mind, I could have hosted of Celebrity Splash, even if it rendered me overqualified. Life, by its very nature, is full of unexplored opportunities; roads less travelled because fate’s GPS system has seen fit to take you elsewhere. But of all the things I could have been, there is one road less travelled that has more lanes than any other and stretches tantalizingly over the horizon. I could have been an actor.
Continue reading “The Bard and I: How I Saved Shakespeare”

I am good. In fact, I am nice, I am kind and I am thoughtful to others. You could go so far as to say that I am just one big ball of wonderful, a ray of sunshine that heats a solar cell that provides crucial electricity to needy orphans and the abandoned penguins they just rescued. Yes siree, I am nothing short of a beautiful, splendid, awesome human being twenty-four hours a day, seven days per week and three hundred and sixty five days per year. Except, of course, when I’m driving.
Continue reading “On the Horn of a Dilemma”

I was dumbstruck. We were returning from a game of golf ­ – a circumstance in and of itself as improbable as what was about to follow ­– when the unthinkable was thought and, even worse, said aloud. My friends, our clubs and I were crammed into my 1982 puke-green Daihatsu Charade and travelling along Coolart Road at a pace that rendered the speed limit largely aspirational. This was clearly too much for the car travelling immediately behind us. With my shoulders hunched over the wheel, their faces seemed to be pressed up against the rearview mirror. As I slowed to turn into the driveway, the impatient car pulled up alongside, a passenger wound down the window and yelled, ‘Out of the way, Gene Wilder!’
Continue reading “Born to be Wilder”

Superman, Spider-Man, Batman: they meant nothing to me. As for the likes of Iron Man, the Green Lantern or Daredevil – I could trip over them in the frozen food aisle at the supermarket and still not recognize them, in spite of the costumes. I realize that superheroes are all the rage right now. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if the sequel to Best Exotic Marigold Hotel starred Thor. Barely a movie goes by without some preposterous champion strapping on some totally outrageous duds with the inevitable promise to combat evil.
Continue reading “Mr. Man and Superman”

If golf is a good walk ruined, fishing makes the act of sitting around and not doing very much a supreme test of human endurance. My grandfather was a keen fisherman. He could plunge his bare hands into a glass of water and come out with a twelve-inch trout, he was that good. My father missed out on the fishing gene and it soon became clear that it’d skipped more than one generation. Suffice to say, my father is a terrible fisherman. I, on the other hand, am not quite as good as he is. Truth is, I always found it easier to catch a cold than I ever did a fish.
Continue reading “Things That Ought To Be Fun (But Aren’t), Part 1”