Speaker 1: Hello, it's me Art Simone. And aren't you one lucky
Speaker 1: bugger to have your earholes growth by my dulcet tones.
Speaker 1: But it gets even better because I am introducing you
Speaker 1: to some very exciting and interesting people who theme a
Speaker 1: little dull and bland on the surface. Trust me, it's
Speaker 1: worth finding out what this person is concealing. Well, I guess,
Speaker 1: I mean I actually don't know what it is. We're
Speaker 1: going to find that bit out together. This is concealed
Speaker 1: with Art Simone. Let's get into it. Roll the shape.
Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Peter.
Speaker 3: I'm sixty six and live alone in Sydney. Everybody who
Speaker 3: knows me to find me for how fast I drive?
Speaker 2: Hello?
Speaker 3: A very dry Marchini, Churchills and Vespers are my favorite.
Speaker 1: Well, hello, Peter, how are you today? Oh?
Speaker 2: Marvelous?
Speaker 3: As always good to hear.
Speaker 1: Now, all right, you've got your nice spectacles on? Are
Speaker 1: they reading glasses?
Speaker 3: They're multifolcure, Yes.
Speaker 1: A bit of both. I have some of those when
Speaker 1: I have to wear glasses, but for most of the
Speaker 1: time I am a g amazon, so I wouldn't ever
Speaker 1: be seen with a pair of glasses on. My lashes
Speaker 1: wouldn't fit.
Speaker 2: You could always go for contact.
Speaker 1: That's true, that's what's in at the moment. They're glued on.
Speaker 1: See what your glasses. You're a nice warm jumper. Did
Speaker 1: you knit that jumper yourself?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Nights in front of the fire. Oh yes, stoking.
Speaker 2: It with coal.
Speaker 1: What's the most flammable thing you've put in a fire before?
Speaker 2: Probably petrol?
Speaker 1: That is quite logical. Actually, all right, So you drive fast?
Speaker 3: Others say that. I say I drive appropriate to the conditions.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, do you have a bit of a lead foot?
Speaker 3: Some people have said that. In fact, almost everybody says that.
Speaker 1: So you're right, not an uber driver? Then I don't
Speaker 1: think list.
Speaker 3: I'm very proud of the fact that I was sixty
Speaker 3: five before I've ever lost my license for speeding.
Speaker 1: Oops. That's right. You can play at home. You can
Speaker 1: get Mario Karsh. That'd be good. Okay. So what I'm
Speaker 1: going to be doing, Peter, is asking you three questions,
Speaker 1: and from the answers to those three questions, I have
Speaker 1: to try and work out what it is you are
Speaker 1: concealing from me today. Are you ready?
Speaker 2: I'm ready?
Speaker 3: But there was so much I'm concealing from you.
Speaker 1: Well, hopefully I get one of them. Right, but I'll
Speaker 1: let you know now my track record is pretty bad.
Speaker 1: So first question I have for you is where in
Speaker 1: Australia would you never go to.
Speaker 3: I try never to go north as the true driver.
Speaker 1: North of the Tweed River. Okay, where's the Tweed River?
Speaker 3: Like I see you had the same geography teacher with
Speaker 3: my children.
Speaker 1: I know the Yarra and I know the Murray. Maybe
Speaker 1: I should take more road trips. I'm usually in the air.
Speaker 1: They should do that. And sometimes you're flying and they go,
Speaker 1: if you look out the window, here's the mountain. It's this.
Speaker 1: I would like give me like a little set of headphones,
Speaker 1: like when you go to the gallery and they do
Speaker 1: a tour, give me one of those so I can
Speaker 1: look out the window and they could be like, that's
Speaker 1: a cloud and this year is another cloud. And if
Speaker 1: you look to your left you can see a field.
Speaker 1: That'll be good. North of the Tweed River. Okay, Well
Speaker 1: I sort of know where that is, but that's all right.
Speaker 1: Where is it? It's like up near Byron Bay.
Speaker 4: It's kind of like right on the border just before
Speaker 4: you get into Queensland.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, never north of the Tweed River. Not going
Speaker 1: to Queensland. Question number two, What do you value most
Speaker 1: in a TV show or film?
Speaker 2: Authenticity?
Speaker 1: Authenticity? Okay? All right, So you don't like SpongeBob square
Speaker 1: pan it so I can imagine maybe not for.
Speaker 2: You, not for me.
Speaker 1: What about Bluie? Everyone loves blue at the moment.
Speaker 2: I love blue?
Speaker 1: Oh good? Okay, all right. And the final question I
Speaker 1: have for you is do you have any nicknames?
Speaker 3: Yes, I have a nickname that is tied to something
Speaker 3: I made famous.
Speaker 1: Nickname tied to something you made famous? Well, what's the nickname?
Speaker 1: Give me the nickname?
Speaker 2: Rabbit?
Speaker 1: Rabbit? Okay, rabbit? Okay, all right, so let's recap. Okay,
Speaker 1: not going north of the tweed into queens Then do
Speaker 1: you like authenticity? And do you have a nickname which
Speaker 1: is rabbit? Okay? You like a martini, and you like
Speaker 1: we not SpongeBob, and you drive really fast and you're
Speaker 1: not a nuber driver. Okay, all right, okay, authenticity. My
Speaker 1: brain went to like reality television then, but then reality
Speaker 1: television is very authentic, so maybe not that, okay. And
Speaker 1: north of the tweet, it's something about a river, river,
Speaker 1: wet things, fish, irrigation, oh, irrigation, Okay, and rabbit rabbit.
Speaker 1: My brain just says rabbit proof fence, and I don't
Speaker 1: think that's about you, rabbit nickname, that's clue, bouncing rabbit,
Speaker 1: rabbit proof fencing. What are rabbit's good breeding? Bouncing, borrowing, burrowing?
Speaker 1: All the bees? Three bees? Okay, I was really going
Speaker 1: to try and get it this time, but I'm really
Speaker 1: it's just nothing. Can I put in no answer.
Speaker 2: I don't write the rules. You can do whatever you like.
Speaker 2: It's your show.
Speaker 1: Okay. For the first time in history, I'm tapping out.
Speaker 1: I'm saying pass. I cannot join the dots today. I
Speaker 1: don't know if there's just the thing shewy of the
Speaker 1: room not correct, but I can't. I can't join it.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tap it out. It's a first. Everyone here
Speaker 1: is to tap it out. Oh, I give up. I surrender.
Speaker 3: I was the original voice of Big Brother. I was
Speaker 3: also executive produce for the first three seasons of Big Brother.
Speaker 3: I was black clad.
Speaker 4: No, yeah, I haven't in reality television. I went away
Speaker 4: from it. I hate myself.
Speaker 3: I don't get the rabbit, though seremary made Bunny ravity
Speaker 3: is famous.
Speaker 4: Peter is Big Brother, the Big Brother, the original Big brother.
Speaker 1: I'm so close now. Well it's good though, because I
Speaker 1: got a lot of questions with his big brother.
Speaker 4: Okay, we are here with Peter, who is in fact
Speaker 4: the original voice of Big Brother, the executive producer for
Speaker 4: the first three seasons down under.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. Now just to flashback, so first three seasons?
Speaker 1: Can you name some of the memorable contestants from those
Speaker 1: first three seasons.
Speaker 3: Well as their notional father I have to love them
Speaker 3: more equally. But people might remember Sarah Marie, people might
Speaker 3: remember Reggie, people might remember Christy Swan.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, oh wow, and look at them now. But
Speaker 1: how did it happen? Did you see another country's version
Speaker 1: and say, you know what, we have to have the
Speaker 1: show down here.
Speaker 3: I didn't do that. That was done by people higher
Speaker 3: up the tree than I was. And then I was
Speaker 3: asked for her to the show, and I said, well,
Speaker 3: that's your decision. If I do the show, it'll be
Speaker 3: done the way I do shows. You have to make
Speaker 3: up your mind as to whether or not the way
Speaker 3: I do shows is to show you want.
Speaker 1: So your role as an executive producer, what kind of
Speaker 1: fell under the umbrella of that? What were you kind
Speaker 1: of in charge of.
Speaker 3: Well, you were responsible for everything, so I watched and
Speaker 3: re edited everything, supervised the games department who did all
Speaker 3: the activities. I was responsible, legally, morally, creatively responsible to
Speaker 3: the network.
Speaker 1: And their requests remind me how long does a season
Speaker 1: of Big Brother last? In terms of how many weeks
Speaker 1: are they filming for? Thirteen weeks thirteen, So that's pretty intense.
Speaker 1: That's almost what like twenty four seven thirteen weeks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're on call, not even mentioning like pre production.
Speaker 3: Not even mentioning pre production, but you do eighteen our days,
Speaker 3: twenty our days. Times I went completely without sleep. I
Speaker 3: had a bed in my office, and the orders to
Speaker 3: the staff was you're more likely to get sacked for
Speaker 3: not waking me up when you should have than waking
Speaker 3: me up when you didn't need to.
Speaker 1: Well, because you were the voice of Big Brother, So
Speaker 1: that means if anyone wanted to talk to you, you
Speaker 1: had to be on call to go and chat to them. Right.
Speaker 3: If it was going to a air, yes, but if
Speaker 3: it was just we're running out of toilet paper, other
Speaker 3: people could do it.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, So they might sit down in the diaryum
Speaker 1: and be like I need two paper they go all right,
Speaker 1: here it is. But if they go I'm really emotional,
Speaker 1: they go all right, will you sit there for a bit?
Speaker 1: We need to go and get Big Brother.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: In the process, when did they go, oh, you should
Speaker 1: be the voice of Big Brother? When they're like, all right,
Speaker 1: you're going to be the one that.
Speaker 3: Was just me getting cranky. Series one, we found it
Speaker 3: very hard to get production crew to think about moving
Speaker 3: to Queen for twenty weeks, leaving their families all that.
Speaker 3: So we ended up with a lot of what I
Speaker 3: call backpacker employees, mostly Brits, and in the first week
Speaker 3: Rome was burning the edits foaks for crashing, people getting hurt.
Speaker 3: Nothing was working properly, nothing worked as well as had
Speaker 3: had in rehearsals. And in the middle of all of that,
Speaker 3: the network guy came up and said, there are too
Speaker 3: many English voices on this show. This is Big Brother Australia.
Speaker 3: And I just said, oh, that's ridiculous. I'm for generation
Speaker 3: argue with that, and walked into the voiceover booth and discovered,
Speaker 3: oh this is fun.
Speaker 1: Oh I like this.
Speaker 2: I like the power.
Speaker 1: Obviously, when you set up a season of Big Brother,
Speaker 1: you kind of know what you're going to be doing
Speaker 1: in terms of like environment now or do you just
Speaker 1: make that up? You to go along like you're like,
Speaker 1: all right, we're going to chuck a dog in one day.
Speaker 1: You know that's going to happen. Or were you just
Speaker 1: kind of bouncing off what the housemates were doing?
Speaker 3: A bit of both. There was a lot of making
Speaker 3: it up on the spot. You have to have a
Speaker 3: plane from which you then deviate.
Speaker 1: How much deviation is that?
Speaker 2: Well quite a lot.
Speaker 3: Because I discovered the joy of being live on air
Speaker 3: and changing my mind about how the healthmage could be
Speaker 3: treated depending on their reaction to one thing. I could
Speaker 3: then go, oh, okay, so you're going to be like that,
Speaker 3: let me do this. In most foreign countries and I
Speaker 3: think after me, there's often a voiceover person who does it,
Speaker 3: and the producers have to handwrite notes to the voiceover person.
Speaker 3: But I had the advantage of being in charge and
Speaker 3: could just back up my mind and go, let's do this.
Speaker 1: Was there anyone above you who could say no? Or
Speaker 1: you were just like I'm the shots.
Speaker 3: I were cast of thousands of people with more important titles,
Speaker 3: but they didn't ever get involved deditorially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's crazy. There must be a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: that would just end up on the cutting room floor,
Speaker 1: but you have to be rolling just in case something
Speaker 1: does happen.
Speaker 3: Well, we get ninety six hours of material a day.
Speaker 2: That's a lot of material.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that turnaround is so quick. Everything is so
Speaker 1: overly produced these days. I agree, where they film it
Speaker 1: in advance, they make up storylines. I was in one
Speaker 1: of the shows, so I know what it's like to
Speaker 1: be produced by someone with them. You know, you've got
Speaker 1: the whole thing planned out and it comes across like
Speaker 1: that on camera most of the time.
Speaker 2: The way I.
Speaker 3: Shore, you don't manipulate the people. You maniprate the environment
Speaker 3: and then the people reacting wise that you couldn't possibly script.
Speaker 1: So while it's all filming all right, so you know,
Speaker 1: they phrased it that you know, they don't see anyone else,
Speaker 1: it's just them. They see each other, they speak to
Speaker 1: this voice. But were there any you had to go
Speaker 1: into the Big brother House off camera to try and
Speaker 1: resolve something you couldn't do just as a voiceover.
Speaker 3: Once and I can't discuss it because it's in contempt
Speaker 3: of court.
Speaker 1: Sallacious.
Speaker 3: I used to do what I called the last rites
Speaker 3: with them before they went into the house, and I said,
Speaker 3: you have to tell me anything that might come up
Speaker 3: in the press so I can protect you. Never occurred
Speaker 3: to this person to tell me that she'd been involved
Speaker 3: in a crime and she's scared of living daylights out
Speaker 3: of the rest of the housemates. Once she had won
Speaker 3: too many drinks and started making up stories that weren't
Speaker 3: even true, so I sent out called the psychologists who
Speaker 3: came down from Brisburne, and she and I went in
Speaker 3: for a couple of hours and settled everything down. I
Speaker 3: even went so far as to send someone to the
Speaker 3: twenty four hour service station and got some hamburgers.
Speaker 1: As long as someone's fed, they're usually happy. The last
Speaker 1: thing you can do to someone is limit their nibbles,
Speaker 1: and then they make it a bit stoppy.
Speaker 3: It's so luxurious by comparison to their ordinary food.
Speaker 1: Were there any days when you were there and you go,
Speaker 1: there is nothing today, like these guys are boring. Were
Speaker 1: there any times you're like, what are we going to do? Oh?
Speaker 3: No, it bored me as your friend. Many days of
Speaker 3: the week, the producer who was assigned to tomorrow's show would
Speaker 3: come bursting into my office about eight o'clock at night
Speaker 3: and say I don't have a show. I don't have
Speaker 3: a show. I'm going to have to put it in
Speaker 3: an activity. And I would watch my food for a
Speaker 3: bit and say, no, just let them boil. And of
Speaker 3: course something that you could never have imagined anyone would
Speaker 3: do would happen when a girl called Turkan decided that
Speaker 3: she was going to leave the house in the middle
Speaker 3: of another wise I was highly structured show. We shut
Speaker 3: off the rest of the story, and the story became
Speaker 3: about Turkey and wanting to leave, and we stayed on
Speaker 3: air with this drama until after eleven. We actually kept
Speaker 3: Rove off air.
Speaker 1: And not Rove Live.
Speaker 3: Rove Live couldn't be live. And I came out of
Speaker 3: the outside broadcast truck and someone walked up to me
Speaker 3: and said that was fantastic television. And I said, well,
Speaker 3: I only wish I'd thought of it.
Speaker 1: I wish I could claim it is my idea.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because people do things that you would never dare script.
Speaker 1: I think the first three seasons were like the Golden Era,
Speaker 1: They're amazing. So were you part of casting.
Speaker 3: The first one? I cast almost by myself, and then
Speaker 3: it was a huge hit and then I suddenly had
Speaker 3: a retinue of people who wanted to be attached to
Speaker 3: a hit, and the second series was cast. I thought
Speaker 3: not as well because it was done as a committee.
Speaker 3: And at the end of series two, I said, I
Speaker 3: don't care. It doesn't have to be me, but one
Speaker 3: person has to cast this show, and the cast has
Speaker 3: to make sense to them. A Series two cast it
Speaker 3: didn't make sense. I couldn't make it do things because
Speaker 3: the dynamics between the people weren't correct.
Speaker 1: How hard was it to cast the first season when
Speaker 1: in reality you didn't really know what the beast was
Speaker 1: yet you were kind of making it up as you
Speaker 1: go along. You could obviously look overseas, but yeah, how
Speaker 1: did you pick what you were looking for?
Speaker 2: Well, you just kind of know.
Speaker 3: The main thing was we were making a show that,
Speaker 3: unlike the overseas ones, we were running at seven o'clock,
Speaker 3: So we had to be child friendly, family friendly in
Speaker 3: that seven o'clock show, and that effects who you cast. Effectively,
Speaker 3: we were running against Home and Away, and so we
Speaker 3: had to provide an alternative to Home and Away that
Speaker 3: was as cheerful and engaging.
Speaker 1: So what was the casting process like for the years
Speaker 1: you were there.
Speaker 3: Every potential contestant went to two different casting sorts whatever
Speaker 3: else you want to call them, and I made them
Speaker 3: rank them on a scale of one to five. And
Speaker 3: I was really interested in the double, five, five, and zero.
Speaker 3: I wasn't very interested in anyone that was two, three,
Speaker 3: four maybe, But basically the most interesting characters were the
Speaker 3: ones who got a zero from one and a five
Speaker 3: from the other, the polarizing people.
Speaker 1: And then when you get those characters, how do you
Speaker 1: then interview them to find their stories.
Speaker 3: They did quite detailed biographies of themselves and lots answered
Speaker 3: lots of questions.
Speaker 2: There was a lot of paperwork, and.
Speaker 3: Then we would have casting days where forty or fifty
Speaker 3: people would be invited to come along and play some
Speaker 3: games and talk to each other and engage in activities.
Speaker 3: And then as I saw people I thought you were interesting,
Speaker 3: I would drag them aside and give them an interview.
Speaker 3: And it sounds terrible that I really knew i'd found somebody.
Speaker 1: When they cried, well, it means they're willing to show
Speaker 1: emotion around other people.
Speaker 3: Well, I felt like I'd found there in a self, right.
Speaker 3: I didn't do anything mean to make them cry, but
Speaker 3: if you just keep asking people, and why say that yes,
Speaker 3: eventually I'll get somewhere. Well, I'll cry.
Speaker 1: Well, it's true. I've always wondered because I did drag Race,
Speaker 1: and I always wondered if they had like a file
Speaker 1: about me where they're like, all right, here's all the
Speaker 1: information on this one. We can tap into this, tap
Speaker 1: into that. Were there little you know, guardbooks on the housemates.
Speaker 3: There was an approved biography that all the crew members
Speaker 3: got and then everything else was withheld for privacy. But
Speaker 3: I had their psyche reports, I had their application forms,
Speaker 3: I had their application tapes. I had everything at my fingertips.
Speaker 1: What was the process for kind of getting someone acclimatized
Speaker 1: back into the world, you know, because there's a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff to catch up on. They've obviously been broadcast
Speaker 1: across the country and everyone knows who they are. Was
Speaker 1: there kind of a process in there you just went off,
Speaker 1: you go love?
Speaker 3: Oh No, they had ongoing psychological support and our support
Speaker 3: depending on their needs. I mean, some of them needed
Speaker 3: security guards, some of them needed a lot of time
Speaker 3: as a therapist. Because you know that phenomenon of when
Speaker 3: you show someone a picture of themselves, they go I
Speaker 3: didn't didn't.
Speaker 1: That was me earlier today, Well.
Speaker 3: The same thing happens. I didn't make them say any
Speaker 3: of the words they said. I didn't make them do
Speaker 3: any of the things they did, but they'd come out
Speaker 3: and have a terrible reaction to seeing themselves as they
Speaker 3: appear to others. We took good care of them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be wild. I guess for some of them,
Speaker 1: you'd be like enemy number one. But they need to
Speaker 1: blame someone, so they'd be like, oh, it's all your fault, Peter.
Speaker 3: Well, it was we who invented the idea of blaming
Speaker 3: the editor. Ah, because sometimes people do things that don't
Speaker 3: come across very well because they're odd, very nice things
Speaker 3: to do. Then they face exposure to the public. And
Speaker 3: so the answer to that was to say, oh, I
Speaker 3: was edited badly.
Speaker 1: What's that RuPaul has released her own song, blame it
Speaker 1: on the edit. Because so many people will comeup with
Speaker 1: drag race and be like, it's the editing, it's the editing.
Speaker 1: I'm not like that. I sway, well, no, you might
Speaker 1: not be like that all the time, but in that
Speaker 1: situation you were.
Speaker 3: I don't know about RuPaul, but I don't think they
Speaker 3: put words in your mouth.
Speaker 1: No, oh, that be said. I've been in a situation
Speaker 1: where I was coerced to say something like battered down
Speaker 1: until the words came out of my mouth because they
Speaker 1: wouldn't let me leave.
Speaker 3: They're what I called god puppet shows where the producer
Speaker 3: is so involved you can almost pick who the producer
Speaker 3: was who got them to just say that.
Speaker 1: I remember when I walked into drag Race when I
Speaker 1: filmed it, I was like, I know how the how
Speaker 1: this all works. I'm not going to fall for it.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to lean into what they want me
Speaker 1: to do. I'm just going to be myself and do
Speaker 1: my own thing. But it got to the point where
Speaker 1: I'd been fighting with them for so long that it
Speaker 1: was just so tiring that the easiest way was just
Speaker 1: to go along with it and be like, Okay, this
Speaker 1: is what we're doing. Fine.
Speaker 3: I don't admire that personally as a production method, the
Speaker 3: less you have to do with what people say and
Speaker 3: do more authentic the production becomes.
Speaker 1: Out of those first three seasons, it'd big brother, what
Speaker 1: are you most proud of? What do you walk away with?
Speaker 1: And go I'm really happy I did that.
Speaker 3: Oh a lot, just to pick an example the friendship
Speaker 3: between Blair and Johnny.
Speaker 2: Blair, middle class.
Speaker 3: White boy would never have met Johnny in the city
Speaker 3: gay boy, and formed a friendship so close that when
Speaker 3: Johnny was evicted, Blair cried. And I think that models
Speaker 3: to a lot of teenagers it's okay to accept difference
Speaker 3: and be friends. I think there was a lot of
Speaker 3: that kind of messaging in those shows.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think there was a lot of magic in
Speaker 1: bringing people together. You know. That's the exciting thing of
Speaker 1: Big Brother is a big melting pot of different types
Speaker 1: of people from all different corners of the country.
Speaker 3: And friendships that you wouldn't have predicted and they would
Speaker 3: never have had it had they not gone into the house.
Speaker 1: I want to know if you can give me some
Speaker 1: tips to becoming the Big Brother voice and getting the
Speaker 1: housemates to do things that like you wanted them to do.
Speaker 1: So I talked too fast, I probably should slow down.
Speaker 3: First of all, Well, yeah, the hardest thing about being
Speaker 3: Picked Brother is not laughing. And sometimes people would be
Speaker 3: so ridiculous that I'd have to turn my mic off
Speaker 3: and have a good old laugh and the voice over
Speaker 3: birth and then flick the microphone back on and sound Stern.
Speaker 3: You sound too good natured.
Speaker 2: Hoo is this big brother y'all? My god? Could you
Speaker 2: just say clean up your man's and stop yelling at
Speaker 2: each other things?
Speaker 1: Maybe so that was Peter the original voice of being brother,
Speaker 1: and well, while I think I do have the deep
Speaker 1: and booming in very important voice, I guess he can
Speaker 1: climb that one. For now. You've been listening to an
Speaker 1: iHeart Australia production concealed with artsimone. Listen to more of
Speaker 1: what you love on iHeart, and to check out two
Speaker 1: people whose voices have changed a nation, check us out
Speaker 1: on the socials