Flacco sans tights

Will Flacco match The Sandman's baring act on GNW? Well, he's giving up the ruffles. Sacha Molitorisz reports.
 
    Last year, during the inaugral and very successful GNW Sandman adn Flacco Special, The Sandman stole the show with a superbly shocking nude sketch.  This year, for the follow up "Unspectacular", it's Flacco's turn.
    So, the throbbing question on every fan's lips: does Flacco deliver the nudie goodies?  Does he go all the way? Well for starters he does discard those tights...
    "He's a differnent character now,"  says the 44-year-old Paul Livingston, Flacco's alter ego.  "He doesn't wear stupid stu[pid costumes any more.  I told myself that when I turn 40, I'm not going to wear tights on stage,
    "But that I decided - that was it! Flacco had to come to Paul Livingston now. He had to wear nice clothes."  So the Elizabethan garb is history, so to speak.
    "And I think he's funnier.  He's certainly nowhere near as surreal.  You have to reinvent your character.  I couldn't just go on squaking for the rest of my life."
    Strictly speaking, then, you won't see Flacco nude.  But you will see Paul Mcdermott singing, The Gadflys strumming, MIkey Robins guffawing, the Sandman montoning and Flacco delivering measured doeses of his superbly absurb qord play.  It's all part of what looks like Channle 10's plan to fill up every spare minute of airtime with the Good News Week team it poached from the ABC last year. Recently, another GNW debate; next week, Mikey Robins's pubs special; coming soom, Julie McCrossin's pet project.
    All in all, though, commercial TV still seems an unlikely environment for a character who first punned and confounded his way through a sketch on The Big Gig 15 years ago.
    "Channel 10, ay? Who would've thought? Not me, that's for sure,"  Livingston says.
    "Actually, I dug my heels in when he decision to move was being made.  I'd been retired for about 18months - yeah, I'd retired, though nobody noticed," he laughs. "Then they brought me back and I reinvented the character and had a ball for 12 weeks.  But when they said were going to Channel 10, i said no."
    Ted Robinson, GNW's executive producer, persuaded Livingston to change his mind.  "I suppose it would be different working at Ten if you were hosting something completely inappropriate."
    Such as World's Worst Farm and Agriculture MishapsI?" I love watching those shows secretly," says Livingston.  "They're compelling when you're home alone and only the underpants are on.  Then, when someone knocks at the door, you quickly switch to SBS or the ABC."
    Livingston says that the rules have been rewritten over the past decade.  Somehow, commercial TV had managed to innovate, while the ABC has become stifled by conservatism.  Flacco laughs when he recounts how a couple of years ago the ABC was weighing up two new productions: a series of specials featuring Steve Abbott's Sandman, or a sitcom written by David Williamson.
Perplexingly, ABC execs went with Dog's Head Bay.  That's like backing the Leyland P76 to win next year's Melbounre Grand Prix.
    "To me, the ABC is home.  I want to go back there all the time, but something's got to change."
    For now, Livingston is content. "Working with Steve has given me the most pleasure I've ever had performing.
    "And it's a much broader audience.  A whole new audience, including a lot of kids.  And with all those ads, even people who've never watched the show know the character.  They say, 'You're that guy. You're that guy fomr the television.'
    "I thing I should change his name to That Guy From The Television.  It's better than being called Flampo and Flummux and Franco."