By Ben Cameron
Former Spicks and Specks resident contestant and team leader Alan Brough has ruled out any chance of being involved in a reunion, revival or reboot of the ABC TV hit.
The original show – which also starred comedian Adam Hills and radio announcer Myf Warhurst – ended in 2011.
There was a short-lived reboot with a different cast in 2014.
Brough will be part of a Melbourne Writers’ Festival event in Footscray later this month. The Kiwi funny man (he also appeared in the 2003 comedy Bad Eggs and TV smash hit Kath and Kim) will join other performers to discuss, ironically, change.
“I certainly wouldn’t talk about reviving it,” he says of Spicks and Specks.
“Adam, Myf and I made the decision to finish because we were still enjoying it and audiences were still enjoying it. We wanted to do a thing that not many people get a chance to do, and that’s to go out while it’s good.
“As far as I’m concerned, having made that decision, there would be no reason on earth to do it again.”
Brough says it’s almost like the show never ended anyway.
“It was nice to have a job for such a long period of time, and do a thing that people really connect with, but it’s also [still] on every night,” he says. “People still come up to me and ask me about certain episodes.
“It’s an ongoing thing, even though we haven’t made any episodes since 2010.”
Brough will also plug his new children’s book, Charlie and the War Against the Grannies, at the event at the Footscray Community Arts Centre.
While he’s written plenty for TV, stage and stand-up, this is his first book.
“I was watching a guy in his late 30s deliver our newspaper in his car, and I wondered if children did paper rounds anymore,” he says. “Then I saw an old lady delivering pizza menus, and the idea of children not doing paper rounds because grandmothers controlled all the deliveries just sat in my head for a while and then it all started to coalesce.”
The story is told through the eyes of the book’s main protagonist, 12-year-old Charlie.
“I didn’t find writing as a 12-year-old that difficult,” Brough says. “I found other aspects, I think, hard.
“I had no idea what I was doing; I’d never written a book before.
“It was a big undertaking, getting a story right that is interesting and engaging and original, and making sure the pace of it was right. There were many challenges.”
As part of the Spicks and Specks team, Brough was best known for his encyclopedic knowledge of music.
“Until somebody started asking me, I had no idea that I remembered as much,” he says. “I think music was so important for me because it helped me find my friends, it helped me find my people and a bit of who I was.”
Your all time fav band?
“Probably the Cocteau Twins,” he says.
Alan Brough will appear at Westside Storytelling Live: Change at the Footscray Community Arts Centre on August 27 from 7.30pm. $12.
