In 1971 my 11th year on this planet I was watching a show which was broadcast in Sydney , the show was "The Super Flying Fun Show" hosted by Miss Marilyn and co-hosted by a group of others over the years that it ran, it aired on weekday mornings from 6am till 9am, on one day during 1971 Daryl Somers appeared on this show to publicize his upcoming show "hey Hey It's Saturday" I was a TV head and looked forward to this new offering, it ran for 3 hours Saturday mornings for some time during the early years then became a Saturday night variety show during the eighties, my fondest memories of this show emanate from the 70's, often John Blackman (voice over guy who worked in a booth and added witty comment)would make quite suggestive comments that would not be tolerated today in it's time slot, but we loved it and many young men I knew where entertained by this and it was often a topic in the school yard on Monday, the show featured Daryl Somers as the front man, co costed by a pink puppet Ostritch by the name of Ozzie Ostritch for much of the series,(later in the series Ernie Carroll producer and operator of Ozzie felt that Ozzie no longer had anything to offer and he withdrew Ozzie from the show) Ozzie would sit on a table with Daryl standing by, in the early days the show featured segments such as "The Sharp Pop Quiz" (I think it was called Sharp)and a group of farcical entries interspersed by appearances by the crew,in the early days it truly had energy and was so typically Australian with it's own spin on Aussie humor with a decent splashing of irreverence, things like chook lotto, (for those non Aussies a chook is domestic fowl)chook lotto was a game show where an audience member and another contestant who would be picked from a barrel of entries the week before would come on stage and operate the chook lotto device, which was a hilarious take on the classic wheel that would be spun and the prise the wheel landed on would be awarded the player, but here a large cage like machine filled with frozen chickens would be operated and a frozen chicken would be spate out often careering bouncing and sliding a long way from the machine giving no end of entertainment and often more than one frozen chicken would make it's way out giving Daryl the job of choosing the winning chook, it was quite dangerous but wholly entertaining and once retrieved the frozen chicken would have a number on it which would relate to a prize the contestant had won once a question was answered, " No holds bared" is a term that comes readily to mind when reminiscing about this icon of Australian television.
Sadly the early episodes no longer exist, and all we see of this show today is a series called "Hey Hey by request" a clip show of segments voted noteworthy by viewers.
Nothing exists today that comes close to Hey Hey it's Saturday, in my Psyche it is the most entertaining piece of television to ever emanate from any network in Australia.
