the pip proud-homicide connection - 54 years ago today

It's all very well to say 'what I wouldn't do to see this episode of In Melbourne Tonight (7 April 1969) because, you know, I just love Lucky Grills lol. Well I don't hate him but of course what fascinates me is that this is the episode that my long gone and much missed friend, Pip, was on. I vaguely remember him telling me about this - that Preston tried to put him down and Pip turned the tables on him on live TV - don't know how. I was only dimly aware of who Mike Preston was when Pip mentioned this story - I think I was mixing him up with someone else. 

But I don't think I quite appreciated until a few minutes ago that MP was an actual celebrity, who'd had his own IMT for a long time, and that like Lionel Long, his tenure in Homicide was probably more of a 'get new audiences in with a famous face' thing than it was a 'here's a new guy for the long haul'. 

Anyway the NFSA, which as far as I know is the only real place for this kind of thing, has some Mike Preston's IMT from 1968, and a fragment from 1969, but I have to assume that the Pip episode is gone, gone, gone. Sad but real. 

*BTW (10 April) I thought to check up who else was on that show. Lucky Grills, already mentioned, was of course the comedian who later played Bluey in the cop show Bluey. Nelson (not Neilson) Sardelli was/is a Brazillian-born US-based singer of Italian descent, famous for having had a relationship with Jayne Mansfield (who had died two years before this show was aired). Elaine McKenna is/was a singer famously associated with Channel 9 in the 60s. Laurie Wilson was a TV personality. Ted Hamilton was in an episode of Homicide (Break Out, 1968) and also 227 episodes of Division 4. Overall, very, very conventional showbiz - Pip really needed gumption to be amongst those people.