Bunny ears 🐰

Hello, it's me Art Simone. And aren't you one lucky bugger to have your earholes growth by my dulcet tones. But it gets even better because I am introducing you to some very exciting and interesting people who theme a little dull and bland on the surface. Trust me, it's worth finding out what this person is concealing. Well, I guess, I mean I actually don't know what it is. We're going to find that bit out together. This is concealed with Art Simone. Let's get into it. Roll the shape.

Hi, I'm Peter.

I'm sixty six and live alone in Sydney. Everybody who knows me to find me for how fast I drive?

Hello?

A very dry Marchini, Churchills and Vespers are my favorite.

Well, hello, Peter, how are you today? Oh?

Marvelous?

As always good to hear.

Now, all right, you've got your nice spectacles on? Are they reading glasses?

They're multifolcure, Yes.

A bit of both. I have some of those when I have to wear glasses, but for most of the time I am a g amazon, so I wouldn't ever be seen with a pair of glasses on. My lashes wouldn't fit.

You could always go for contact.

That's true, that's what's in at the moment. They're glued on. See what your glasses. You're a nice warm jumper. Did you knit that jumper yourself?

Yeah? Nights in front of the fire. Oh yes, stoking.

It with coal.

What's the most flammable thing you've put in a fire before?

Probably petrol?

That is quite logical. Actually, all right, So you drive fast?

Others say that. I say I drive appropriate to the conditions.

Oh okay, do you have a bit of a lead foot?

Some people have said that. In fact, almost everybody says that.

So you're right, not an uber driver? Then I don't think list.

I'm very proud of the fact that I was sixty five before I've ever lost my license for speeding.

Oops. That's right. You can play at home. You can get Mario Karsh. That'd be good. Okay. So what I'm going to be doing, Peter, is asking you three questions, and from the answers to those three questions, I have to try and work out what it is you are concealing from me today. Are you ready?

I'm ready?

But there was so much I'm concealing from you.

Well, hopefully I get one of them. Right, but I'll let you know now my track record is pretty bad. So first question I have for you is where in Australia would you never go to.

I try never to go north as the true driver.

North of the Tweed River. Okay, where's the Tweed River?

Like I see you had the same geography teacher with my children.

I know the Yarra and I know the Murray. Maybe I should take more road trips. I'm usually in the air. They should do that. And sometimes you're flying and they go, if you look out the window, here's the mountain. It's this. I would like give me like a little set of headphones, like when you go to the gallery and they do a tour, give me one of those so I can look out the window and they could be like, that's a cloud and this year is another cloud. And if you look to your left you can see a field.

It's kind of like right on the border just before you get into Queensland.

Oh, okay, never north of the Tweed River. Not going to Queensland. Question number two, What do you value most in a TV show or film?

Authenticity?

Authenticity? Okay? All right, So you don't like SpongeBob square pan it so I can imagine maybe not for.

You, not for me.

What about Bluie? Everyone loves blue at the moment.

I love blue?

Oh good? Okay, all right. And the final question I have for you is do you have any nicknames?

Yes, I have a nickname that is tied to something I made famous.

Nickname tied to something you made famous? Well, what's the nickname? Give me the nickname?

Rabbit?

Rabbit? Okay, rabbit? Okay, all right, so let's recap. Okay, not going north of the tweed into queens Then do you like authenticity? And do you have a nickname which is rabbit? Okay? You like a martini, and you like we not SpongeBob, and you drive really fast and you're not a nuber driver. Okay, all right, okay, authenticity. My brain went to like reality television then, but then reality

I don't write the rules. You can do whatever you like. It's your show.

Okay. For the first time in history, I'm tapping out. I'm saying pass. I cannot join the dots today. I don't know if there's just the thing shewy of the room not correct, but I can't. I can't join it. I'm gonna tap it out. It's a first. Everyone here is to tap it out. Oh, I give up. I surrender.

I was the original voice of Big Brother. I was also executive produce for the first three seasons of Big Brother. I was black clad.

No, yeah, I haven't in reality television. I went away from it. I hate myself.

I don't get the rabbit, though seremary made Bunny ravity is famous.

Peter is Big Brother, the Big Brother, the original Big brother.

I'm so close now. Well it's good though, because I got a lot of questions with his big brother.

Okay, we are here with Peter, who is in fact the original voice of Big Brother, the executive producer for the first three seasons down under.

Oh my goodness. Now just to flashback, so first three seasons? Can you name some of the memorable contestants from those first three seasons.

Well as their notional father I have to love them more equally. But people might remember Sarah Marie, people might remember Reggie, people might remember Christy Swan.

Oh wow, oh wow, and look at them now. But how did it happen? Did you see another country's version and say, you know what, we have to have the show down here.

I didn't do that. That was done by people higher up the tree than I was. And then I was asked for her to the show, and I said, well, that's your decision. If I do the show, it'll be done the way I do shows. You have to make up your mind as to whether or not the way I do shows is to show you want.

So your role as an executive producer, what kind of fell under the umbrella of that? What were you kind of in charge of.

Well, you were responsible for everything, so I watched and re edited everything, supervised the games department who did all the activities. I was responsible, legally, morally, creatively responsible to the network.

And their requests remind me how long does a season of Big Brother last? In terms of how many weeks are they filming for? Thirteen weeks thirteen, So that's pretty intense. That's almost what like twenty four seven thirteen weeks. Yeah, you're on call, not even mentioning like pre production.

Not even mentioning pre production, but you do eighteen our days, twenty our days. Times I went completely without sleep. I had a bed in my office, and the orders to the staff was you're more likely to get sacked for not waking me up when you should have than waking me up when you didn't need to.

Well, because you were the voice of Big Brother, So that means if anyone wanted to talk to you, you had to be on call to go and chat to them. Right.

If it was going to a air, yes, but if it was just we're running out of toilet paper, other people could do it.

Oh okay, So they might sit down in the diaryum and be like I need two paper they go all right, here it is. But if they go I'm really emotional, they go all right, will you sit there for a bit? We need to go and get Big Brother.

That's right.

In the process, when did they go, oh, you should be the voice of Big Brother? When they're like, all right, you're going to be the one that.

Was just me getting cranky. Series one, we found it very hard to get production crew to think about moving to Queen for twenty weeks, leaving their families all that. So we ended up with a lot of what I call backpacker employees, mostly Brits, and in the first week Rome was burning the edits foaks for crashing, people getting hurt. Nothing was working properly, nothing worked as well as had had in rehearsals. And in the middle of all of that, the network guy came up and said, there are too

Oh I like this.

I like the power.

Obviously, when you set up a season of Big Brother, you kind of know what you're going to be doing in terms of like environment now or do you just make that up? You to go along like you're like, all right, we're going to chuck a dog in one day. You know that's going to happen. Or were you just kind of bouncing off what the housemates were doing?

A bit of both. There was a lot of making it up on the spot. You have to have a plane from which you then deviate.

How much deviation is that?

Well quite a lot.

Because I discovered the joy of being live on air and changing my mind about how the healthmage could be treated depending on their reaction to one thing. I could then go, oh, okay, so you're going to be like that, let me do this. In most foreign countries and I think after me, there's often a voiceover person who does it, and the producers have to handwrite notes to the voiceover person. But I had the advantage of being in charge and could just back up my mind and go, let's do this.

Was there anyone above you who could say no? Or you were just like I'm the shots.

I were cast of thousands of people with more important titles, but they didn't ever get involved deditorially.

Yeah, it's crazy. There must be a lot of stuff that would just end up on the cutting room floor, but you have to be rolling just in case something does happen.

Well, we get ninety six hours of material a day.

That's a lot of material.

Yeah, and that turnaround is so quick. Everything is so overly produced these days. I agree, where they film it in advance, they make up storylines. I was in one of the shows, so I know what it's like to be produced by someone with them. You know, you've got the whole thing planned out and it comes across like that on camera most of the time.

The way I.

Shore, you don't manipulate the people. You maniprate the environment and then the people reacting wise that you couldn't possibly script.

So while it's all filming all right, so you know, they phrased it that you know, they don't see anyone else, it's just them. They see each other, they speak to this voice. But were there any you had to go into the Big brother House off camera to try and resolve something you couldn't do just as a voiceover.

Once and I can't discuss it because it's in contempt of court.

Sallacious.

I used to do what I called the last rites with them before they went into the house, and I said, you have to tell me anything that might come up in the press so I can protect you. Never occurred to this person to tell me that she'd been involved in a crime and she's scared of living daylights out

As long as someone's fed, they're usually happy. The last thing you can do to someone is limit their nibbles, and then they make it a bit stoppy.

It's so luxurious by comparison to their ordinary food.

Were there any days when you were there and you go, there is nothing today, like these guys are boring. Were there any times you're like, what are we going to do? Oh?

No, it bored me as your friend. Many days of the week, the producer who was assigned to tomorrow's show would come bursting into my office about eight o'clock at night and say I don't have a show. I don't have a show. I'm going to have to put it in an activity. And I would watch my food for a

And not Rove Live.

Rove Live couldn't be live. And I came out of the outside broadcast truck and someone walked up to me and said that was fantastic television. And I said, well, I only wish I'd thought of it.

I wish I could claim it is my idea.

Yeah, because people do things that you would never dare script.

I think the first three seasons were like the Golden Era, They're amazing. So were you part of casting.

The first one? I cast almost by myself, and then it was a huge hit and then I suddenly had a retinue of people who wanted to be attached to a hit, and the second series was cast. I thought not as well because it was done as a committee. And at the end of series two, I said, I don't care. It doesn't have to be me, but one person has to cast this show, and the cast has to make sense to them. A Series two cast it

How hard was it to cast the first season when in reality you didn't really know what the beast was yet you were kind of making it up as you go along. You could obviously look overseas, but yeah, how did you pick what you were looking for?

Well, you just kind of know.

The main thing was we were making a show that, unlike the overseas ones, we were running at seven o'clock, So we had to be child friendly, family friendly in that seven o'clock show, and that effects who you cast. Effectively, we were running against Home and Away, and so we had to provide an alternative to Home and Away that was as cheerful and engaging.

So what was the casting process like for the years you were there.

Every potential contestant went to two different casting sorts whatever else you want to call them, and I made them rank them on a scale of one to five. And I was really interested in the double, five, five, and zero. I wasn't very interested in anyone that was two, three, four maybe, But basically the most interesting characters were the ones who got a zero from one and a five from the other, the polarizing people.

And then when you get those characters, how do you then interview them to find their stories.

They did quite detailed biographies of themselves and lots answered lots of questions.

There was a lot of paperwork, and.

Then we would have casting days where forty or fifty people would be invited to come along and play some games and talk to each other and engage in activities. And then as I saw people I thought you were interesting, I would drag them aside and give them an interview. And it sounds terrible that I really knew i'd found somebody.

When they cried, well, it means they're willing to show emotion around other people.

Well, I felt like I'd found there in a self, right. I didn't do anything mean to make them cry, but if you just keep asking people, and why say that yes, eventually I'll get somewhere. Well, I'll cry.

Well, it's true. I've always wondered because I did drag Race, and I always wondered if they had like a file about me where they're like, all right, here's all the information on this one. We can tap into this, tap into that. Were there little you know, guardbooks on the housemates.

There was an approved biography that all the crew members got and then everything else was withheld for privacy. But I had their psyche reports, I had their application forms, I had their application tapes. I had everything at my fingertips.

What was the process for kind of getting someone acclimatized back into the world, you know, because there's a lot of stuff to catch up on. They've obviously been broadcast across the country and everyone knows who they are. Was there kind of a process in there you just went off, you go love?

Oh No, they had ongoing psychological support and our support depending on their needs. I mean, some of them needed security guards, some of them needed a lot of time as a therapist. Because you know that phenomenon of when you show someone a picture of themselves, they go I didn't didn't.

That was me earlier today, Well.

The same thing happens. I didn't make them say any of the words they said. I didn't make them do any of the things they did, but they'd come out and have a terrible reaction to seeing themselves as they appear to others. We took good care of them.

Yeah, that would be wild. I guess for some of them, you'd be like enemy number one. But they need to blame someone, so they'd be like, oh, it's all your fault, Peter.

Well, it was we who invented the idea of blaming the editor. Ah, because sometimes people do things that don't come across very well because they're odd, very nice things to do. Then they face exposure to the public. And so the answer to that was to say, oh, I was edited badly.

What's that RuPaul has released her own song, blame it on the edit. Because so many people will comeup with drag race and be like, it's the editing, it's the editing. I'm not like that. I sway, well, no, you might not be like that all the time, but in that situation you were.

I don't know about RuPaul, but I don't think they put words in your mouth.

No, oh, that be said. I've been in a situation where I was coerced to say something like battered down until the words came out of my mouth because they wouldn't let me leave.

They're what I called god puppet shows where the producer is so involved you can almost pick who the producer was who got them to just say that.

I remember when I walked into drag Race when I filmed it, I was like, I know how the how this all works. I'm not going to fall for it. I'm not going to lean into what they want me to do. I'm just going to be myself and do my own thing. But it got to the point where I'd been fighting with them for so long that it was just so tiring that the easiest way was just to go along with it and be like, Okay, this is what we're doing. Fine.

I don't admire that personally as a production method, the less you have to do with what people say and do more authentic the production becomes.

Out of those first three seasons, it'd big brother, what are you most proud of? What do you walk away with? And go I'm really happy I did that.

Oh a lot, just to pick an example the friendship between Blair and Johnny.

Blair, middle class.

White boy would never have met Johnny in the city gay boy, and formed a friendship so close that when Johnny was evicted, Blair cried. And I think that models to a lot of teenagers it's okay to accept difference and be friends. I think there was a lot of that kind of messaging in those shows.

Yeah, I think there was a lot of magic in bringing people together. You know. That's the exciting thing of Big Brother is a big melting pot of different types of people from all different corners of the country.

And friendships that you wouldn't have predicted and they would never have had it had they not gone into the house.

I want to know if you can give me some tips to becoming the Big Brother voice and getting the housemates to do things that like you wanted them to do. So I talked too fast, I probably should slow down.

First of all, Well, yeah, the hardest thing about being Picked Brother is not laughing. And sometimes people would be so ridiculous that I'd have to turn my mic off and have a good old laugh and the voice over birth and then flick the microphone back on and sound Stern. You sound too good natured.

Hoo is this big brother y'all? My god? Could you just say clean up your man's and stop yelling at each other things?

Maybe so that was Peter the original voice of being brother, and well, while I think I do have the deep and booming in very important voice, I guess he can climb that one. For now. You've been listening to an iHeart Australia production concealed with artsimone. Listen to more of what you love on iHeart, and to check out two people whose voices have changed a nation, check us out on the socials