Welcome to the Chrizzy Cast. I've spun the wheel and it's come up the category of pals and it really could have spun up any category from radio host, comedian, TV presenter, all round overachiever style Maven. You know it's borderline, just like on a wheel of fortune. And we welcome to the Crizzy Cast. The great Tim Rosso Ross.
Thank you very much, so good to see you. Looking for fabulous am I.
I've had a year, Rosso.
Do you want to talk about that now?
No, we'll talk about that, okay over a coffee.
Okay. I'm sure everyone would rather hear about your year than what I've got to talk about.
I'm going to spin the wheel again, Rosso.
Okay, good, I love a wheel.
And well, look at that, my best year has come up. I can't wait. I was hoping it would come up for you. What Tim ROSSA Ross? Is your best year yet?
I've had I've had a few. It's hard to decide. Can I do too?
Yes?
It's such a curious thing, isn't it to think about whole years and and how they affect you and what happened. But also without sounding like a wanker. Yeah, so oh well that was the year that I did this, or you know, the years that you have children's really important. But that goes without saying, yeah, they don't count. No, there was a woman I can't remember her name. She was one of those She was on one of those shows that were big Wisteria Lane.
Oh god, I can see them all.
She had blonde hair and she's married to William H. Macy. Everyone's bad.
Oh god, what's her name?
Anyway? She once I saw and.
She got embroiled.
She's in jail in that. Yeah, she's in jail because she.
Was paying people off to get her kids into the university. Yeah. What's her name? Felicity?
Yeah, yeah, Felicity who was in Desperate Housewife, Desperate House Hands on the butter But I saw this interview with her.
Pick a famous face.
I loved the famous face lived.
Around on Sale of the Century.
Ill take the home, viewer, please.
I would never have taken the home.
Why would you? Why you know there's someone from Charlie's Angels or Brett from Craigie Bird exactly. You know, take far and face at Majors every time.
Cheryl Ladd for the Wind, she was on there a bit.
God, it's just all coming back. I love a pick of the board. She once said, not Cheryl Ladd Felicity, that she felt like that everyone should when you talk about your greatest achievements, she should, you should talk about your children. Uh, And she said, well not for me, it's my career. I thought that was pretty brave.
I do too, and I actually and I agree with it. I agree with it.
I think when she said it right, which was maybe twelve years ago, maybe fifteen years ago, I think it was controversial. I think today everyone would go, yeah, it makes sense.
I've got in trouble for SAE.
For not loving your children enough.
Well, this is the thing. I love them so much.
But it goes without saying, doesn't it.
Yes, But I also feel like I love them in a way that no one else loves their children. But I know that everybody feels that way.
But that's the secret source.
And I don't talk about them much because every day millions of women give birth to a baby. It's like the most common thing that happens. So I don't think I can add anything to that. And I was in I don't like doing you know, like you know, I don't even know what you call them. But there's people with seance. Yeah, group massacre. No, I you know, you sit in front of a group of market researchs other women barbecue talk with a microphone. What is that called
or something? Keynote speaking. I don't do it, but I was forced to anyway. I was answering a question about that vibe and Buttress was on there, and she waited until I finished, and then in front of everybody, she said, well, can I just disagree with you? And you know, children are I don't know. She made me sound like witch. You know, she made me sound all and it's hard, like I was keeping them in a cage and putting a bone in there, you know what I mean. Yuck.
Well, that's not what I meant. I don't want to say anything about Ida, but everyone has their own journey with and she was probably not around for her kids as much she would have liked to in a time that didn't understand that exactly. My mother was very fond of her. She subscribed to her Item magazine. Yes, was an event once right and we went out. Can I tell you this story? Yes?
So used to it when you talk about your mom, which was awesome.
Take a mom out of the situation. For two seconds. So we go to one of these lunches we used to have back in the day, whole bunch of Sydney radio people and you know, red meat men, Mad lunch we used to call you. And so ben Fordham's there and we've had a lot to drink.
And were you in radio when it was like that?
What? Not as good as when it was like that? Just after? Was good? But it wasn't good.
But it wasn't. It wasn't Doug mulray level.
That was It wasn't wasn't Ferrari level. And so ben Fordham's sister is an artist and there's and there's an exhibition going on and it opens at five o'clock on a Friday afternoon, and we are and we all turn up like like it's like a hurricane of drunk people, you know, classic mid two thousands. I'm wearing thongs, some flat jeans, you know, like looking like Bloody from the Goodies. And somewhere along the line we pick up our bulldog who's not in the show business at all. He comes along.
What a great nickname, and so we're like Joey John's the famous rugby league player well known for like and everything. Even he looked at us and went, oh, you guys are a bit over.
The you know, have you read a gallery a gallery opening?
And just so it is there, I'm having a chat. This sounds like I'm having a chat to Ida. And I introduced Ida to Bulldog. I sort of know Eida because I was at a Foxtale event once and told her that my mum really liked her. And she said to me, she said, will you tell your mum that I said hello, which is like the most beautiful thing you could say. And so I introduced I'm introducing Ida to Bulldog. They're chatting up a storm. Everything gets a
little bit hazy there. You know, you meet a whole bunch of people in subsequent years, going I met you at that gallery thing, I fort him. Fast forward to two days later. I actually American, and I ended up sending flowers to Ben's sisters apologize for being so drunk at her opening. But the one thing that I do remember was Michael Bulldog being out the front eider leaving, getting into a limousine and her winding down the window and waving out see her later. Bulldog. Anyway, what were
we talking about? He is a cracker, amazing, amazing, amazing.
We were talking about your best year.
So yeah. So it's a very roundabout way using the weave to say that. It goes without saying that children are the most important year and your marriage is fantastic and all that sort of stuff. But I like the idea of transitional years or years that speak outside of your own being. So then there's something happening in the zeitgeist that creates opportunities that sometimes we don't look at. So would would you like me to go to the eighties or the mid two mid to late two thousand slas you go.
To the eighties any day of the week, I choes eighties.
So nineteen eighty seven, Oh god, I'm seventeen. Yes, and this I thought that this was going to be how my life was for the rest of it. Have you finished school? No, So it was like year eleven going into your twelve. This girlfriend, she's got an amazing house near the beach. Her parents are at work every day. We're just hanging out by the pool, and I've got a pair of mambo shorts blue and white.
Oh my god.
There's a lot of refoil going around.
Was there? Oakley T shirt?
Yeah? All, there's frog skins, there's everything going on. There's music playing, there's people around, we're drinking their mum's white wine. It's all that stuff going on. And then at night I had these pair of black paintent shoes that I used to wear with a pair of shorts to like the nightclubs. When we get into the nightclubs, we used to go to Inflation and Tunnel and all that sort
of stuff. And Tunnel was this nightclub and we worked out how you that you could jump over, like through this lane into their car park and going through the toilet brilliant, so we could get so we were just smuggling everyone into it.
I would have never been brave enough to do that. I was scaredy. Yeah, it's take a lot more risks now.
I think I didn't look I didn't look eighteen at seventeen, I think O my brother's idea or something like that. So it was like you could get in for free. And also you weren't it wasn't you still.
Look very young. I was surprised because you know when someone drank you about when they're finishing school.
You thought I was class of ninety nine, well, class of eighty eight.
I thought you were much younger than me, and I finished in ninety one.
Yeah, no, I'm the big fifty four. I know. Wow, amazing, isn't it.
It is amazing.
I was, but Me's is much younger than me. MEM's is like fifty maybe it's fifty one this year or something. And so yeah, I was like, and I would sit at the older end of the comics around at the time, right, so I'm older than well, you don't look I'm older than hughsy and Rove and Will and all that, because then we're all older than Hughesy. I don't know, I never maybe I don't know. Oh, I don't know. You'd have we'd have to google his things. But anyway, so
nineteen eighty seven and I just loved it. And a friend of mine years later was talking about how we were there and it was really our last summer before we'd finished school. Andyone thinks about the last summer being the year after you finished school. Yeah, but after everyone finishes, everyone just saw it really disappeared, and then they're all
gone and you never see them again. But that year of nineteen eighty seven, where you're sort of old enough to have all these experiences, but you're about to embark on year twelve. Yeah, and then you know, these pretty girls around me and my mate and you know, tanning it up, hanging around the pool like them and Endias twins, you know, like the brothers. You know, it's like it's just one of you, Eric, I'm the one with their hair for what they are. But there was just I
felt like this was it. This was like yeah, and then I ended up I'm dating one of them, and then that doesn't work out, and then I'm dating another one of the same girls in the friendship groups and there's no animosity going on. Like I was just like this is amazing, and you know, parents just you know, happy just to leave us at the house, don't care that the wolf blast is gone.
The agent see it at all.
If you go and going to the beach, staying in the city. And then when you're at a nightclub when you're seventeen, you find you always find out because you're with adults, so you always find other seventeen eighteen year olds there. And then there's another girlfriend that you meet from somewhere weird and yeah, just these random and then this idea, which I think is more important. Is this idea that you could meet people in those days and then you'd leave it up to chance to see whether
you'd ever see them again. Yes, And that we had no without social media, You've got no no, there's no vehicle, there's nothing, there's no where to hold those friendships.
There was not even any mobile phone, so you wouldn't.
You would very rarely bother to get anyone's phone number unless you really wanted to date them or something like it. That even then you'd just go, there's a good chance I will see them again at one of these venues. Yeah, And like you weren't fussed about it and you just trusted in that.
Yeah.
And then so you'd go a year later. You might be we'd go to Lawn or something for New Year's Eve, and then the next year we'd go to Byron Bay and the same people would always be at these places. You go, that's you from a year ago. Then you drink for a week with them, and then they were just gone forever.
I've forgotten.
Yeah. Interesting, So there that I think, and then I just you know, you get into year twelve and then it all sort of changed, and then you've got to you've got to be a bit more adult. Where you're on the casp, you're seventeen. You sort of you're sort of getting everything done for you, boozy, You're going to have some of the good times. Yeah, you said that at that time, you thought that this was it, this
was your life. Now you've achieved seventeen years and there, and that I was going to spend my whole life around in people's pools, and that was pretty girls.
Clean living on the set of Puberty.
Blue Blues with you know, a lot of a lot of refoil being if put on people's bodies.
I love refoil. Still. You can get a black market in Bali. If you could go back and whisper something in young Tim's ear, what would it be? It doesn't last.
I wouldn't. I wouldn't give myself any hits on anything. I mean, I think it's I only have one regret in life, and it's the weirdest regret of all the time. I regret that when I was in a band, and I was much younger, when we used to hire pas in terms of you know, public address systems, you don't have the bands to play out of that. We didn't buy one because I rented so many over the years. I should have bought a PA years and years ago. I bought one when I was I don't know, thirty
nine or forty or something. It's like, why why have I been hiring these for years? Having one of them? So easy?
Kids party and they're not that expensive.
No, not now, they were expensive then, but even then, we should have invested in one.
What did you pay for your PA? Because I've got one too, because I like to sing as a.
Real The one that I've had for ten years was eight hundred dollars.
Mine was two eighty nine.
I'll send you a link mine professional professional one. Mine isn't.
I've got one in the kitchen and then one in my bedroom so that I can if I want to sing upstairs, I can do it because if I have to walk all the way downstairs and.
Finds you do play a long music a lot to it.
Yeah, it's like just in the background and then you if I'm listening, like at the moment, do you hyper fixate on songs or things?
Know? Any crazy people do that?
Of course you definitely do. I'm hyper fixated at the moment for some reason. On the Doobie Brothers, what a full belief.
Great song it.
I think it is the perfect song. And obviously I've known it for years decades, but just recently it's like it fits my vibes, it fits my She.
Came from soup where about you? Long ago? It's center man of food.
And then sometimes what you do re create yet to be created.
You know it? Yeah?
And no, no, I just have to get the microphone. She musts are smart. Why here's nostalgic tale. It's it's magical. Listen to it within the next twenty four hours, you know.
Strangely enough, tonight I'll be doing a show and we do this yacht rock medley and there's a little bit of that you're joking. Yeah, And my favorite bit is that we do a bit of Christopher Cross ride like the wind Break song Tell you what?
That is not my favorite Christopher Cross though.
Theme from Arthur. Yeah, yeah, it's much better.
So do you know who wrote that?
Dudley Moore?
Peter Allen? Oh?
Did he good songwriter?
And when you hear it again, you're like, oh, obviously it's Peter Allen. You can hear it. You can hear his DNA in it. I want to talk about cars, rosso hang on. Let me sorry, Christopher cross Story, Oh yeah, yes, just right like the wind.
So best mate it. When I do the show with he's great singer and he's singing, you know, the ride like the wind, such a long way to go. And while he's singing that.
Good to the bottom mexicle.
And Wred, you sing no, So it's the light like the wind, and I've got my back. I'm doing this like I'm running, like I'm running like the wind. And when we first started doing it, I'm ridiculous because I'm standing to my back to the microphone to show how it works on and I had a frog puppet. What yeah, and so it's I got such a long way to go. And then with the frog puppet, I would go into the micro no where to go with the puppet.
It was the frog puppet was the echo.
Yeah it was that was doing the big that Michael what's his name's backing vocals. Then I lost the puppet. No one really liked it. So now I just just turn around and sing it was it worth the payoff? Not really?
Well it is because initially when you mentioned the yacht rock medley, I thought it was like, you know, g up music that that acts played before.
They get and we do that.
I didn't realize that you were performing the rock at Medley. What else is in it? Yacht rock is my favorite.
Starts with Hall and Oates, which one. God, I can't it's in my head, but I can't remember.
It's probably my dreams come true.
No, anyway, I don't. I but we finish with America Magic right, Oh god, great song, great song. So we're doing it. I got this friend Jerry Beckley right, who messaged me through Instagram.
Jerry Beckley sounds like, you know, a rock star from the.
Fifties or sixties, late sixties, seventies and tomorrow.
He's the guitarist.
He's the guitarist in the band America.
Oh my god, I've got goosebump.
So Jerry's married to a woman in Sydney. What yeah, that they met in London? All right, Jerry likes architecture. I like architecture.
I've got full goosebub Yeah.
So I get a direct message from this guy Jerry one day. I'm keay Tim, I'm coming to your show on Tuesday night. Be great to hang afterwards and meat. I'm like, god this, Yeah, it's a bit of a random thing, like clearly Instagram dms don't have an American accent, ha ha. But but suddenly it's worked out. I googled this guy's it's Jerry from America anyway, so it comes along.
It's the nicest guy, super handsome, loveliest guy. He's got all the stories and like he just wants to catch up and have coffees and stuff and talk about architecture and are you.
Just looking at his face which is right in front of his brain that knows so much about music and everyone life, and he has a story about everyone that we weren't even we were even alive when he was living.
Like he was young for that time. He was like eighteen or seventeen in the late ninety sixtyes, so he's only in his seventies, so he's not like as old as the other guys, and he will great for his age. So he comes to shows.
Now, Oh my god, I can't believe this.
So I invite him to the Motel show and then I forget and he sings, magic didn't write it, but sings. I forgot. We were doing it.
Sing a little bit before me can do Madew.
He didn't do anything the jes magic and you know you're the one about the fire magic.
No, no, you skipped the good bit. You know, don where when you guessed your spell.
That's the magic.
He's actually magic.
And then he's in the audience and has to watch us do that.
Oh my god. You know, this is the great thing about having a podcast like this is because that is deeply interesting to me. And I was offered an interview with somebody that literally everyone would reject, and I nearly broke my fingers to say yes, please, don't.
Wanta Steving from the love Boat.
Meryl Meryl Steving. No, it wasn't. I think he's passed away.
Yeah, I did him him good? Who was it?
I'm gonna say, Graham Gould. You wouldn't know him. But do you know this like walking in the ring that's the snow and there's nowhere to go, and you feel like a body of you is dying.
That's in medly as well.
CC.
He wrote that he wrote a lot hit get him in.
For like a thirty second podcast. It just says fucking thank you, and just.
Ask him, Jerry will do your podcast. I'm going to I've written him our introdution to Jerry you'll love him. My God, you're for the rest of your life. You'll say to me, you know, that was really great. Jerry was the nicest guy I've ever met. And guy's handsome and dress as well. He's so charmed.
That's what I say about you. Oh, I can't say that about Jerry.
Yeah, yeah, you will. There's plenty of plenty to go around.
I want to move on to cars. You have a podcast, Cars That Made Australia Australia. I just love how you know so much about very specific things. That's what I love about.
A little bit about a lot of random stuff.
Amazing. And you've said that cars can tell you a lot about someone's personality and aspirations. And I want you to give me a reading psychic style I drive. I can't wait for you to find out what I drive. You're going to be crepulsed.
I'm not judging, far from the time some judging.
You're going to be judging. Okay, A Rabo Toyota rav four hybrid, good car, white, hard to get, hard to get exactly, okay, hard to get. The only show I have what is white? Makes it like a higher car?
Agreed, They're really hard to get it was all I could get though, And well you're lucky you go one. I bet you had to pull one of those shop is strings to get Like there are people who are on the waiting list for a RAB four for a model that hasn't even been undesigned, and great car.
So I love it. Really, there's no judgment there, only than the color.
It's like an ambulance.
Do you know if I had, if I had a choice, what color, well I would have got there's a funny sort of putty gray green color.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I would get that. Yeah, we still could just have a bang, get it resprayed, but yeah, no judgment. What was your first car?
My very first car was a Dahatsu Charade great basically a lawn mower. Yeah yeah, yeah, and I loved it. Me and my friends would pack into that two door. It was magic.
They had all those things that those cars around the time when they would and they'd do the marketing decals and they had like a sports girl Barna.
Yes, the sports girl. I wanted that, and they just laser. No, there was a laser to a sports girl.
Laser. There was a god there's a Paddy to lend his colors and Patty Laser.
Oh my god, is so glassy.
And then we know what happened. They just said that have all these leftover cars and they go, God, we've got all these buriners lying around. What are we going to deal with them? He drives brainers. Oh girls, Well we've got a young girls. They like sports girls. They got you know, those bags, they sports girl bags. Let's make a sports girl bag that people can drive around. You.
God, I love marketing and I ate all yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember there was a girl at school. She was the year above me, and you know, and it's what was that Amanda stool st yu Eli And she was a year above me, but she was old so that yeah, she turned eighteen in maybe February or my yeah.
Yeah.
She would drive to school every single day and I would just.
Watch well and in the sports Girl Barina.
In a black sports girl Barna yeah, yeah, yeah, brand new.
She's she's she's one gear shift away from dating the PA teacher.
I think it was a science teacher. I want to talk about your childhood, and I want to know how your birth order affected.
Tim Simon, you are Yeah, that's a really very good and interesting question because something I think about quite a lot, so do I. So I'm the youngest, so am I.
But by a lot. There's a there's a gap between me and my sisters. How ten eight.
That's my dad was like, No, so not so much. I'm like a oldest brother four years. The other one's really eighteen months, but it's really two years in school year, So not huge, no, But you know, I still have to sort of yell a bit to be heard, which is really interesting. So when you're having discussions about stuff, you got to like, actually, you know, I'm here, I'm going to have a view on this. And I do not blame them at all because they brothered me my
whole life. And I was little and they looked after me and that's what they did. And I were the most beautiful big brothers. And they're much taller than me as well, like you know, proper men.
Do they look like you?
Uh not really? Oh, Campbell the middle brother looks more like me now than probably ever before, as our faces have changed over time. But they you know, my Campbell the middle brother, he saved me when I almost drowned when we were canoeing when I would have been thirteen or fourteen or something just held the canoe and held me like a big man, giant. My brother, oldest brother, Steve.
When I watched the family dog get run over, I was with my mates and sh and I watched it go underneath the car and I went back to the house, and you know, he held me when I just sobbed into his arms. And then I sobbed into his arms. After my grandmother died as well, and it was I was an adult then, but it was a beautiful bookends of you. I like it the to have a bigit that was established to have a big brother, but to have a physically big brother I just love because I'm
a little man. But they but more generally, which has nothing to do with them, is because the best way of putting it is right, there are three people in a boys in a family, and there's a totem tennis set. There's only two rackets. I guess who doesn't get to play.
You absolutely do not get a go, and did I.
And they give you a go, But you never get to the point that you can be competitive because it's too busy, so you sort of you get pushed to the side. So that's what's made me quite a strange person, to be honest. So my interests were weird. While my brothers were having to do things like that we're playing to playing totem tennis, I would be inside with my little playmer biles and all this stuff and making dioramas of Cold Creek.
And stuff like.
I was obsessed with the oldie colonial times and all sorts of things and yeah, god, yeah.
So I was telling a friend yesterday.
Take me to Sovereign Hill when I'm ten. I'm the happiest person in the wood.
Literally twenty four hours ago, I sit, I'm having some friends over for lunch on Saturday, and I've been very isolated for you, I haven't seen anybody. And last night I was setting the table two days ahead, just to see if I could do it, if I could remember how to set a table, how to have people. Yeah. Yeah, Anyway, I took a photo of it and I sent it to a friend and he was like, yeah, you just
set the table. I said, no, I'm really proud of myself because it looks like, you know, I had I'd made little flower posies and beautiful little crystal cups, and it's just it looked so beautiful. I was so proud of myself, And I said, IM proud of myself because it looks like it did in my mind. And I said, and I'm used to. You know, in grade six, they give you an assignment and I literally said the words build a diorama of old colonial times, and then I
would get on fire with it. I'm like, yes, I'm going to make little wagon wheels and cobblestone streets and there's going to be someone in mid mid throw of the of the toilet bowl out there, and then I would make it and it would look so shit.
Yeah mine was shit. Yeah shit. And there's a deep disappointment as a child because you can't make things as much as good as you'd like them to be. Yes, And that crushes us a little bit.
And that ruined me my whole life, that colonial thing. And that's why I'm always surprised when I can do something literally from that assignment.
Let's just point out here that colonialism had it a much more significant effect on a lot more other people than you.
Yes, but did Sovereign Hill. Sovereign Hill is my favorite place I haven't.
Been for years. We went, we did that thing at school. So for those of we should say for those of you who can't be googling, it's it's an old time, you know, theme park where you go along and you can they pan for gold, and it looks like it's an eight and fifties mining.
Village, but it is a whole village with streets and areas and precincts. There's now a little Chinese area for when the Chinese settlers came to. Honestly, it is my favorite. We went a favorite thing.
We went out for the school camp where you went to school there where you dress up and so the tourists come along. Never did that and then they see you dressed up with the little cap like you're in Oliver. Oh my god, Yeah, that was quite. That was quite the thing I've do. You know, can I ruin some magic? Kind of ruined some magic?
A careful, it's my favorite place.
So they panned for gold. So they go down there and show you how to pan for gold and so then you can be higher the panning pan. And the guy goes, this is how you do it, but he brings a pan that's already got dirt with gold in it, and he goes that this is how you do it, and he pans it, and then he goes, oh, look there's a speck of gold, and there must be gold in here, but it was he came preloaded with gold.
What's crueler that lie or Santa. I felt very uncomfortable lying about Santa to my kids. I couldn't wait for them to work it out. I never ever lie to them about anything, and I couldn't even look them in the eye.
I didn't. I found it all a bit weird because we grew up without Santa. How why I think it's just a Christian thing.
I don't.
I really don't know. I just so I never win, always got presents, but we never got presents from Santa.
So I've never heard that before. Very unusual.
My sister in law has never been to Bunnings. What, Yeah, you could go to the phones on this one, wouldn't you. In normal she's meant to office work, though she's been a office week's beever, she's not interested. Lives in an apartment, but no, I don't. I don't.
It's plenty of stuff at Bunnings for an apartment.
But I know she's just not interested. But I I remember vividly being a young kid trying to work out it, saying mum, or how would if he did come, how would he get through that? And how could he?
Was she quite pragmatic. She's like, yeah, no he doesn't because he doesn't exist, or she question.
I don't think they tried to say that he didn't exist. It just wasn't part of our lot.
I've never heard that ever. Rosso everybody has Santa unless you're you know, a different relig Yeah.
Yeah, I know I'm having a record. I think about that now, but I know it's quite well.
Were you any religion like Protestant, toil Methodists.
Uniting Church? But I just don't. I don't. I never really asked, wow, because I mean it's just you know, like those things that it didn't worry me because I don't feel like.
Santa is omnipresent from descend from late mid November, like didn't you want didn't you go? Who's that guy? And then you're too busy making a coloning.
I just didn't. I just didn't even think about it. I was we love putting up the tree. I loved getting presents and then all that, all those things. I loved pulling out the tree and that one year and the little things that went around and those things have been handed down. There was, of course that was and then Maumauld pull out some you know, give us all the toilet bag. That's great. That's what every eight year old wants, very practical.
It's just for your overnight business days. Let's talk about your book please. I did have a copy in I habage you did. I love receiving stuff from you, pleasure. I've got something else to talk about in terms of receiving stuff. But tell us about your book. It's called Beauty and it's a book of short stories. And I've got this mailing list and I write stories to it, and then I put some of them in a book and then wrote some new ones. You are one of
the most. Like I'm a reader. Your work is so sublime to me.
Thank you.
I just feel like it's such because I'm on the mailing list and I'm going through shit feels no spam, and then I get this glittering email from Tim Ross and it's just a beautiful, tender, nostalgic, sentimental thing. It's just beautiful. You're such a good writer.
Thank you. I like it. I like how it connects with people. I was doing an event last night and with my dear friend Bob Murphy. And Bob is very kind about my writing, and I think Bob writes beautifully as well. And yeah, he was great. He was a great football player, and there's a true gentleman. But I always joke that, you know, I'm probably his only friend who doesn't talk to him about footy. But we bonded a lot about writing because he wrote a really beautiful book.
And I don't talk to many people about writing for whatever reason. I just, you know, occasionally I do, but some friends whatever. But it's so Bob, that was a really nice thing to talk about and crafting stories in a similar way and how you do it. But what I like is that how the experience connects us. This to write stories about when you're growing up at whether it's going to school or whatever, and they go, that
could be my life. That was sort of like that, even though I lived a weird life without Santa haha. So no matter where you are in the country, these things connect us in different ways.
The reason I love your writing is because I thought I was the only person that could recall in perfect detail the smell of my grand's carpet or the feel of the handle on her sugar bowl. And you you are also that person you right in terms of smells and feelings and colors, and I just identify so much with it. I understand everything you write.
Yeah, that's interesting. Maybe that is that when if you are going back to that idea of when you are the youngest, you're more observant because you left to your own devices a little bit more, so you have to I just scan everything. I still do, so do I I'm just like I don't, and I'm not sure everyone does. I'm pretty sure they don't. I just remember it all, Yeah, remember all I remember. I just remember the most vivid things, like I met these people came to one of my
shows recently and the daughters went. I went to school with them, and I remember the color of their cars, remember a haircut, everything, like remember the going to their house, how beautiful it was.
And do people when you say, yeah, I remember you, I caught the tram with you in nineteen eighty one or something like that, they like, no. And you know, I can see that girl at you know, we're run into each other at minimax now as fifty year old, I can see her at six. I know that that's her. She looks exactly the same to me. And I can say where you lived, you had a quarry tall balcony. Yeah, you had a fern and a chandelier in your in
your front yard and I thought it was amazing. You had a raw tron owl in them.
And she's just like, did we Yeah? Some people weren't aware of That's like, but you lived there. Yeah, they wouldn't say it. Yeah, I've got a I know this woman and they've got this huge house and they've got a room that's the Christmas Room.
What so what permanently.
Full time dining table, lounge room, Christmas tree and they only use it on Christmas Day.
And they never take the Christmas tree down.
It's the Christmas Room. Isn't that amazing? I want to see it.
I want to see it too.
How many rooms does That's a huge house and like in the outer suburbs of Sydney, the Christmas Room, Christmas Room, It's like an amazing idea.
Okay, if you had a house like that with just rooms willing Milly with nothing in them, what would your version of the Christmas Room be?
The only room I would create and I wouldn't do it because I'd probably have some sort of museum, yes, like I'd have a museum of the things with things that I love displayed in a way that you could walk in and go. Actually, that would make me feel crazy. No, I don't. I don't. I don't need that space. I don't know. I like the idea of it makes me uncomfortable, Like I'd much rather have smaller spaces and less and yeah, I love the idea of someone else doing that. I
love the magic of that. If you're a kid, that the only only time you would go into that room, you wouldn't even open the door.
Imagine a playdate.
Yeah, I like what's in that?
Yeah, come in here.
I don't have a look at the Christmas room. And the fact that you would just think that everyone when you're little, you don't have a Christmas room because everything in the center of your world is seems normal. Yeah, which is why we were all crazy, Because if you can't separate the fact that you don't people have se don't have a Christmas room. Because if you just think everyone should have a Christmas room because you have a Christmas room, that's what we're all man.
I want to thank you for.
Being my friend being thank you.
Thank you for being friends.
So can I ask you a question? Sure? So, over the years, I have noticed that you do enjoy singing, and you've got a reasonable voice.
I enjoy singing.
Yeah, you sing more like I sing at home? Yeah, by one sing like karaoke.
I don't drink anymore. Yeah, And I think that that I'm sort of four years into it now. Everybody, when I first gave up, they were like, oh, how do you you know? Have you noticed any difference? I'm like, no, not really, But now four years in, I have noticed that my ability to have fun has been affected.
Yeah. You just don't feel like you need to do those things you use.
My fun is. My fun is different, and it's you know, very insular and quiet.
Yeah.
And I don't know whether that's age or booze. I don't know.
Well, the only what I would say is because I probably draw as parallels that you probably I wasn't as aware of as much of how much of an introvert I really was until I stop drinking. Yeah, me too, so and then which is hard. And someone said to me the other day, he goes, oh, I could have told you that twenty years ago. I said, I wasn't aware of that because I was drug all the time. No,
because the question asked, let's go full circle. Would you come along one day when we do the motel immediately at the start and punch out the song with us as.
A special guest. Yes, I would.
That's a good answer, Yeah, I would.
I feel very safe with you, even though I stumbled above, But I was worried because I'm very safe with you. Yeah, because if you're like the idea of that makes me really nervous. Didn't want to do it, like you could do it now anytime now in the next fifteen years. But I think you'd really enjoy it. I think i too. You know that I've had a conversation with your best
friend Kit whereabouts. I called him up because Kit is my ah yes, favorite name of all time, and I didn't have the guts to do it with my first child for some reason. I don't know you just and then after I had him, I was like, oh my god, I am fiers. I will do whatever I fucking like. So when I was pregnant again with a boy, I was like, right here he is, this is Kit. But I just wanted to talk to a Kit that had been in the world, and just see if he liked his name, you know, if it had been a good
name for him. So I called him and he said, I've loved it. I've loved it right from the get go.
But kids turn into the names that they are. But yeah, and I think it's done him.
Well, yeah, you're a very stylish man. I don't know where it comes from. You are impeccably groomed. You have extraordinary manners. It's like you're from another time, but very much today. I don't know how you do it. I've never met anybody like you. Every time you send me something, it's got a handwritten note, and every time I get it, I go, I've got to do that.
That is that.
I am so impressed by that, and I need to do that. And I've gone on to Vista Print. Oh and I have created a card with a sworn on one side and my name on the other. Oh and in a little envelope. It's not as stylish as yours, but the stylish ones cost a lot of money.
I love that.
And then at the checkout they said, would you like a sticker for the back of it, and I said yes, for free. So what I'm going to do. I won't take it off now, but I'm going to write you a note and I'm going to put it in the first one, and I want to thank you for encouraging me to do that, to be classy.
Oh, people just like and it stays with you forever because you know, like we all get an email that says thank you very much for that. But I don't know. I think it's nice. I think, and sometimes I think you don't always say goodbye or thank you in the way you'd like to be case somemon drags you somewhere or you don't.
Yeah, you've got to plane.
There's a little bit of time to think about. Oh, that was really nice. And I do it sometimes when I write read a book that I really like from someone, I write them a letter and so I really like that, or Telly Show or something like that.
Because it's a wonderful thing to do, and we just don't we just don't think of it anymore because we're all tap tap tapping.
The problem with it is the older you get, when you do it, you do appear to be a little bit crazy. No, that's that weird guys writing things. No, not crazy.
I can't believe it's a dollar fifty to send a standard of Like, that's what I can't believe. And also you look like Eddie Bedder. When did that happen? Do yep yep, Tim Ross, you thank you so much. Grab a copy of Rosso's magnificent book can Beauty Man, you can get do do?
You can do anything?
You magic?
Thank you have the best no joke.
And that was the magnificent and surprising Renaissance Man Rosso. Please try and get your hands on his new collection of short stories. It's titled Beauty b E W d Y. You can find it online at Modernist Books dot com. It's been a total pleasure and this episode is going straight to the poor room Beauty. Speaking of the poor room, you got to check out the batshit crazy bargains you can get your hands on at the quzzycas dot com. Garrisel, I'm adding new stuff all the time, like I can't
stop now. So does the fresh stuff there get it