Has it really been 20 years of Ramsay Street?

TOM ADAIR

BEEN there, done that, met the actors, swallowed the storylines, bought the T-shirt. At home my wife and I have a pair of wally dugs called Madge and Harold, a cat called Lou and a budgie named Bouncer. My wife, though, refuses to change her name to Mrs Mangel. My neighbours refuse to change the name of our little cul-de-sac, yet I live in hope.

Then again, Ramsay Street is not so much a place (my doctor insists) as a state of mind. It's a mental condition known as Neighbours, the twice-a-day soap from Melbourne, Australia. I've tried to shake it. Instead, it shakes me.




Neighbours started life in March 1985 on Australia's Seven Network. After four months the network axed it - displaying the foresight of the men who turned down the Beatles - as its ratings had waned, they said. Because in Sydney no-one watched it.

Grundy Television bought it and offered the show to Network Ten, where it was resurrected in 1986. What happened next is a TV legend. A few months later Neighbours was bought by the BBC to revamp its jaded daytime schedule. Aired at lunchtimes, it was given a daily repeat at teatime because kids were skipping classes to keep a- of the latest pash between Scott and Charlene - Jason Donovan and Kylie Minogue.

The show boasted viewing figures in Britain, at its peak in 1990, of 19 million. Next week, the BBC will celebrate two decades of Neighbours glory with a series of special episodes.

Neighbours occupies a soft spot in viewers' hearts. The show is now beamed to every continent and shown in 57 countries and has over 120 million fans.

In Melbourne, though, they hate it. In Sydney, the cradle of Home and Away, a soap with sand in its teeth and no class, their opinions verge on the unrepeatable. "Neighbours is junk," said a guy as we sunbathed at Bondi Beach.

Melburnians sneered: "We never watch it. It's boring. It sucks. It just for kids."

They were missing the point. The point of Neighbours - its very foundation - is its decency, its sense of moral certainty. It provides a means of escape; it is an allegorical heaven in which characters are subjected to the trials of everyday life. Loyalty, honesty, and the resolution of arguments without violence are its stock-in-trade. No-one swears - though Lou says "Strewth!" if faced with nuclear disaster.

Jan Russ, the show's associate producer, says: "The golden age was with Jason and Kylie, and then, of course, there was gorgeous Guy." Guy Pearce, who played Mike Young, is Neighbours' top movie success, having starred in LA Confidential and a slew of Hollywood hits.

"That, I guess, was when things took off with viewers in Britain. Who doesn't remember Charlene's wedding?" she says. Millions of viewers tuned in to see cutie-bottom Minogue and matinee-boy Donovan get spliced. It was, some believe, yuck's finest hour.

Over the years the show has launched an impressive galaxy of stars. After Kylie and Jason's pop success, others cast members - such as Natalie Imbruglia who played sweet country girl Beth Brennan, Holly Valance, who played Flick Scully, and Delta Goodrem as Nina Tucker - tried to emulate them, some disappearing at record speed.

Charlene's wedding dress is displayed at Melbourne Museum beside an exhibit titled "Melbourne: Stories From a City", which features a set from the show. I paid it a visit and found it crawling with schoolchildren and their teachers. There, in their midst, stood the world once inhabited by the Robinsons, the Martins and now the Scullys: the kitchen of No 26. There, family spats were laid to rest; there Helen Daniels, a groovy pensioner, practised the wisdom of a sphinx.

Inside the fridge sat Scott and Charlene's three-tier wedding cake. It was made of cardboard - just like the show. Across the concourse was that talismanic wedding dress. People stared, for a moment transfixed, as if at a ghost or an angel. One woman dabbed away a tear. Two backpacking teenage girls from Penzance were surreptitiously taking a snapshot. "It's for our mother," they whispered. They pointed towards mother, who was rummaging through some cupboards in the kitchen. What's Neighbours' appeal? I asked her, confessing my own addiction. "I just like the characters," she answered, "even the bad ones turn out to be better than you think." I nodded in agreement.

My simple theory, for what it's worth, is that something magical occurs when the pictures we see pass through the lens of television, into the lens of our own mind's eye, towards wish-fulfilment."Someone once said to me," says Russ, "it's the way life used to be, a time when we knew our neighbours, a time when communities were real. And that's the key to Neighbours' success." It's a plausible line, but I don't believe it.

For surely we know that life was never the bird-nest existence Neighbours dares to dream it might be. Instead it displays our better instincts, unfettered by life's intractable mess. And it doesn't preach. This makes us listen all the harder.

Actor Tom Oliver, who plays Lou Carpenter, tells me: "Whenever an issue arises, both sides of the coin are shown." It's a view shared by Ian Smith, one of the show's writers, who plays Harold Bishop. He adds: "And don't forget the weather. People love to see the sunshine stream through their living rooms. It helps."

Whatever the truth, an amazing two decades - some 4,800 episodes - have been made. Five hundred sets have been built. Twelve thousand eight hundred actors have been employed. Each year up to 20,000 fans take the tour of Ramsay Street (on the map it's called Pin Oak Court). If you sat down and watched every episode ever screened, viewing for 24 hours a day, it would take you almost 11 weeks to get up to date.

Fans of the show can next week enjoy a binge of nostalgia as Neighbours goes gooey in the middle, bringing back stars from its heyday. Woven into the celebratory story line is a visit from a supposed BBC film team, led by former ditzy, poetry-writing neighbour Annalise Hartman (Kimberly Davies), now Down Under on a mission to make a programme about the power of a tiny community in shaping its residents' lives.

This pretext ushers the reappearance of former favourites such as Joe Mangel (played by Mark Little), who reunites with his daughter, Sky. Will sexy Annalise hook up again with Lou? Will Joe choke a chook? Will wounds be healed or scars ripped open?

Tuesday's lunchtime special episode will be followed by a documentary: 20 Years of Neighbours: a Celebration, with Andi Peters taking a Ramsay Street constitutional in the company of Paul Robinson (Stefan Dennis), sharing snippets of gossip with the cast both past and present. That afternoon the Neighbours website will launch a game called "Harold's Lost Years" which recalls Harold's period as a gunman stalking Tasmania - as close to mania as Neighbours is likely to get. And then there's the anniversary board game, specially minted. Only five of these exist.

If you play the web quiz you might strike lucky - just like the fan who once lay in a coma until Smith dispatched a tape of Harold huffing and puffing. All his bluster woke her up within 24 hours. What other soap can deliver miracles?

At the Elephant & Wheelbarrow in the suburb of St Kilda, on Melbourne's beachfront, every Monday night is Neighbours night. I went there to pay my respects, and to meet the cast who mingle with fans, sign naked flesh, and sink a few tinnies with the punters (mostly British students high on a mixture of booze and Harold-mania).

"My granny loves it," wittered Toby from Hemel Hempstead. "So does my sister. So does Jake and he's a Hell's Angel."

Whoever Jake was, he was absent, but Toby was present enough for all of them.

He began to sing the theme tune. The crowd joined in. If you'd opened your window that night you'd have heard us in fine voice.

Next week we'll be meeting in spirit. Twenty years and undefeated. Here's to the din.

Street Theatre

• CHARLENE AND SCOTT'S WEDDING: Even people who've never seen Neighbours know about Scott and Charlene. The feisty female mechanic and scruffy blonde hunk were played by Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan, and the chemistry between them was as hot on-screen as it was off it (though we weren't meant to know about that at that time). The on-screen couple got married to Angry Anderson's Suddenly, which went on to become a Top Ten hit. The wedding went down as the defining moment of the soap's 1980s heyday.

• HELEN'S DEATH: The episode in which Helen Daniels died - episode 2,965 - was aired in Australia in October 1997 - and in the UK on 1 April 1998. It was a nostalgic occasion. The actress, Anne Haddy, had been ill and hurriedly written out of the show, but returned for one final time to record her character's death scene. When it came, Helen's end was peaceful, she passed surrounded by friends and family. No end episode credits were featured for the first and only time in the show's history, and, instead, a collection of stills of Helen were shown. An era had drawn to a close.

• THE RESURRECTION OF HAROLD: Harold Bishop was sitting on a cliff looking out to the ocean while nearby Madge was talking to a watercolourist. When she next glanced up, Harold was gone, and all that remained were his glasses. Everyone thought he was dead, but, hallelujah, he wasn't. He'd merely fallen into the sea and swum to Tasmania. When he arrived he developed amnesia and ended up working for the Salvation Army. As chance would have it, he began working with Marlene, a friend of Helen's, who figured out he was Harold. He returned to Ramsay Street, was reunited with Madge, got his memory back and never mentioned the ordeal again.

• HENRY'S NAKED DASH: Rarely did Neighbours go X-rated, but there has been occasional nudity. Henry Ramsay - played by Craig MacLachlan - had been dating Bronwyn, despite the feelings of Bron's absent Aunt Edie. One day Edie returned home unexpectedly. Henry fled in a towel, which got stuck in the door, and he did a naked sprint through the gardens of Ramsay Street.

http://news.scotsman.com/entertainment.cfm?id=2089822005

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