Bob is a much in demand guest speaker talking about the early, rather scary days of Australian television and his time with “The King” Graham Kennedy and many others.

CHAT SESSION 111 with Bob Phillips

Topic- BOB PHILLIPS - “The Golden Days of Television”

Tuesday 10th June 2025 2pm https://rppfm.com.au

Podcast 🎧https://megaphone.link/LCRUI3545736955

Bob Phillips is a writer, award winning TV producer and broadcaster. He commenced his career in showbiz as a carnival hand, worked as a cinema projectionist, moved to television and worked as a producer and executive producer for Australian TV icons such as Graham Kennedy, Bert Newton, Daryl Somers, Don Lane, Mike Walsh and Steve Vizard. His first book was “Like No Other Business”, a light-hearted look at the first fifty years of Australian television. And more recently he published his first novel “The Taylors” – An Australian Dynasty. Bob was married to TV presenter and actress the late Judy Banks and together they established Australia’s first TV and media museum on the Mornington Peninsula. Their son Andrew is an academic and established author with six published books.

Bob is a much in demand guest speaker talking about the early, rather scary days of Australian television and his time with “The King” Graham Kennedy and many others.

Outside of TV variety, Bob acted as Producer/Consultant for The Miss Australia Quest and Walton’s “Quest of Quests”. Documentary wise, he co-produced “When Rock Was Young” with Young Talent Time host Johnny Young and has contributed to a number of books and publications relevant to Australia’s early Pop music history. Bob produced one of our earliest pop video clips for the Brian Cadd and Don Mudie song “Show Me The Way”.

He founded his own record label VAMP during the mid-sixties, initially specializing in promoting modern jazz artists, but later venturing into Rock ‘n Roll, Stomp and top forty material. Successful top 40 chart releases included, “The Sphinx Won’t Tell” by Australian group The Four Kinsmen.

The early 70s found him producing the TV pop show “Happening 70” hosted by Ross D. Wylie, during which he formed a lifelong connection with music guru Ian “Molly” Meldrum.

In the early days of ATV Channel 0 (now Channel 10) Bob created the mad cap TV breakfast show Fredd Bear’s Breakfast ‘a Go Go, hosted by his wife to be Judy Banks and the incredibly talented Fredd Bear (played by Channel 0 wardrobe master Tedd Dunn). It was groundbreaking breakfast television and a challenge for Judy working with a non-talking bear! Michael McCarthy (a Bert Newton look- a-like) read the news and the amazingly talented voice over genius Colin McEwan was an integral part of the show.

Breakfast ‘a Go Go was aimed equally at adults and kids and happily was an immediate ratings success. Although it was ‘live’ to air daily at 7.00 am, it attracted guest appearances from all major celebrities of the time including, Normie Rowe, John Farnham, Colleen Hewitt, Russell Morris, Johnny O’Keefe and many others. The show was a madcap, off-the wall combination of news, cartoons, chat guests, cooking demos etc. It paved the way for “Hey, Hey It’s Saturday” on Channel Nine some years later.

In the 1970’s Bob formed an artist’s management company – Television Entertainers of Australia. As the name suggests, it concentrated mainly on name television performers. The original clients were Daryl Somers, Colleen Hewitt, Ron Blaskett and Gerry Gee and television and radio host Vi Greenhalf. But eventually the organization represented anyone from strippers to TV celebrity chefs!

The connection with Daryl led to Bob’s role as the original Executive Producer of Hey, Hey It’s Saturday and an ongoing attachment with the iconic program during its record-breaking run. A side project for Bob was creating the top rating “Best and Worst of Red Faces” specials for the Nine Network.

Part of Bob’s role with Television Entertainers of Australia was the production of big budget, fund raising “Night of Stars” live concerts in association with long term TV personality and broadcaster Tony Charlton.

These were massive events with full orchestra, mainly staged at Hamer Hall in Melbourne, featuring some of Australia’s very top entertainment icons including, The Seekers, Barry Crocker, Rolf Harris and a very young, virtually unknown Kylie Minogue - Bob had to talk Tony Charlton into booking her for the show!

Other ‘live’ productions took Bob into the world of Melbourne’s Moomba Festival. For a decade he produced most of Moomba’s major attractions including, The King of Moomba concerts, The Magic Garden and the perilous Moomba Showboat. A self-propelled floating stage, which again featured some of Australia’s top performers working live, and at one time featuring the “King of Television” Graham Kennedy. Not an easy gig, with sometimes tropical weather conditions, generator problems and the need to dodge the water ski show!

In a much safer environment, we saw Bob and his late wife Judy Banks establish Australia’s first TV and Media Museum on the Mornington Peninsula. Originally named The Australian Museum of Modern Media, it was later re-christened TV World and featured some amazing memorabilia from the early years of TV and Radio. Rare items included Dexter the robot from Perfect Match, Judith Durham’s tambourine from The Seekers, Rolf Harris’s original Wobble Board etc. TV World was a key Peninsula tourism destination for many years.

Bob and Judy were very early members of the Mornington Peninsula’s Community Radio station RPP-FM. For three decades they hosted the popular weekly (and sometimes outrageous!) chat/gossip program “Sugar and Spice” which again, welcomed some of the biggest names in Australia, from pop stars to politicians!

Bob still contributes to the station as a presenter and lives on a small property on the Peninsula with a couple of old rescue horses and two warring pussy cats!

Follow Bob on Facebook and click on the link to purchase a copy of his book

THE TAYLORS – An Australian Dynasty on Amazon or Pegasus Publishers

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