Daryl Paul Somers (né Schulz; 6 August 1951) is an Australian television personality and musician, and a triple Gold Logie award winner. He rose to national fame as the host and executive producer of the long-running comedy-variety program Hey Hey It's Saturday and continued his television celebrity and status as host of the live-performance program Dancing with the Stars.
Somers was honoured in 2004 with the award of a Medal of the Order of Australia, and by Australia Post in 2018 by having his portrait featured on a series of postage stamps.
Somers lived in the Melbourne suburb of Prahran and was educated at the Christian Brothers College, St. Kilda. A drummer and singer, he played in bands such as the Newbeat Brass and a group playing music in the style of Herb Alpert which began under the name "Pasquale and his Mexican Rhythm". Newbeat Brass comprised five schoolfriends and quickly gained an 18-month residency at the Cascade Restaurant in the Melbourne suburb of Moorabbin. It was either Newbeat Brass or another group, Somerset, formed by Somers subsequently, which appeared on GTV-9's talent-quest program New Faces, winning their way to the finals only to be beaten by John Williamson. His parents and brothers had changed their name from Schulz to Somers by 1970.
Cartoon Corner and Hey Hey It's Saturday era (1971–77, 1979–1999)
Somers started professional TV work on 14 July 1971. Two stories have been told about his entree into television; one that he was spotted by Ernie Carroll and invited to audition. In this telling, his audition included an impersonation of Mr Magoo. A different version of the story, in Somers' own telling from a 1976 issue of TV Week, is that he was taking singing lessons from Evie Hayes who arranged for him to audition for a hosting role. He impressed a panel of 'people sitting upstairs' with his Popeye voice, and was told three weeks later he had the job. He was paid $75 ($863.22 in 2022 terms) a week as the Melbourne host of Cartoon Corner.
The Sydney Cartoon Corner had previously been shown in Melbourne with the name Skeeter's Cartoon Corner; it was hosted by James Kemsley who would go on to draw the famous Ginger Meggs comic strip for 23 years. Somers' first words were "Hi, I'm Daryl Somers; Skeeter will no longer be with us, and now it's time for a cartoon." (Another account has it that his opening line was, 'Hello, I'm Daryl Somers and I'll be here for as long as you want me'). Kemsley continued to host the Sydney Cartoon Corner until mid-1973, and other states would have their own similar but unique programs.
Soon after Somers' debut on Cartoon Corner, he began hosting additional children's shows on GTV-9. The first of these was on 23 August 1971, for a week's programming under the title Holiday Carnival. This was a two-and-a-half hour slot in which Somers presented competitions alongside the footballer Peter McKenna who provided football tips—interspersing a screening of various old films such as the 1944 western Ghost Guns. This short-lived series of programs proved to be the forerunner to Hey Hey It's Saturday, which officially began on 9 October 1971. Somers and McKenna continued as hosts, but eight weeks later the show introduced the pink puppet Ossie Ostrich, operated and voiced by Carroll. Old films continued to be a feature of the early shows: the first Hey Hey It's Saturday incorporated the Shirley Temple film Stowaway. McKenna continued to be billed as cohost until September 1972 and the following month, Ossie Ostrich's name began to appear alongside Somers' in TV listings.
While it quickly morphed into a Saturday morning children's cartoon show—an expanded version of Cartoon Corner, which Somers continued to host for some years (the Somers Cartoon Corner was broadcast in Sydney as well as Melbourne beginning in 1975) Hey Hey It's Saturday gradually expanded in both size and scope.
In early 1978, Somers and Carroll suspended making of Hey Hey It's Saturday in their first attempt to broaden their audience—or rather, to find a time slot and a format to fully cater to the audience they already had. Hey Hey It's Saturday did not appear in early 1978 and instead Somers and Carroll created The Daryl and Ossie Special for Nine. Somers told the Sydney Sun-Herald that despite the perception of Hey Hey as a children's show, '40 per cent of our audience' were, in fact, adults. The new special took two months to write, featured guests Chelsea Brown and The Echoes, and first screened in Melbourne on 10 May 1978. Soon afterwards Somers and Carroll left Nine to create a new show on the 0-10 Network, The Daryl and Ossie Show, which ran in September and October of that year. The show's ratings were poor, and they returned to Nine the following year to resume Hey Hey It's Saturday on 17 February 1979 with Jacki MacDonald as co-host.
Soon, additional cast members joined, and cartoons were phased out in favour of regular and guest performers. Alongside MacDonald, booth announcer John Blackman voiced many (unseen) characters. The program's production crew also began to play a prominent role in the series, with sound-effects technician Murray Tregonning adding humorous sound bites and effects from a huge bank of recorded eight-track cartridges, and personnel such as long-serving cameraman "Lucky Phil" Lambert making regular appearances.
Props assistant Ian "Krystal" Murray provided props, most famously the "Dickie Knee" character:I hit my knee on the desk one morning and said, 'Oh, I've got a dicky knee', and this voice immediately answered 'G'day' [...] A week later Krystal came up with this hairdressing polystyrene head with a wig on and wearing a school cap. It popped up in front of the desk and became a permanent character.
The series' distinctive brand of irreverent humour soon attracted a sizable adult audience and in 1984 it had become so popular that Nine made the decision to move it to a 9:30 p.m. Saturday evening timeslot. The show was renamed Hey Hey It's Saturday Night. It remained on Saturday night for the rest of its run, but it moved to the 6:30 p.m. time slot in June 1985 and eventually reverted to the name Hey Hey It's Saturday. At its height, Hey Hey It's Saturday was one of the most popular and consistently high-rating series in the history of Australian television, winning many awards including three Gold Logie awards for Somers. In its initial incarnation, Hey Hey screened for 28 years (1971–1999) on the Nine Network across Australia.
In 1976, Somers branched out to become host of a revival of the music show Bandstand for Channel 9. It was reported at the time that Somers hoped Bandstand would "open the doors to an international cabaret career in London and Las Vegas." The new version of the show—also known as Bandstand '76—was a commercial television response to the success of ABC-TV shows such as Countdown. It was scheduled at 6 p.m. on Saturday nights in Sydney or 6:30 in Melbourne, against the repeat of the previous Sunday's Countdown. The first episode, screened 21 February 1976, featured AC/DC, Ted Mulry Gang, Bill and Boyd, Bryan Davies, Debbie Byrne, Lee Conway, The Executives and video clips of songs by Queen, Max Merritt and the Meteors, and ABBA. Unlike Countdown, which showcased only original artists and insisted on the right to premiere new releases Somers' Bandstand featured a mixture of video clips and local artists performing current hits by others. Somers told Dale Plummer of the Sydney Sun-Herald in November 1976 that his show had 'a wider age group than the others, and surveys show we have a much higher rating generally.' It was announced in early 1977 that the show was renewed for the new year but it did not go ahead.
Family Feud and The Daryl Somers Show (1980–1983)
In 1980, Somers replaced Tony Barber on the quiz show Family Feud and hosted the program for three years and 713 episodes.
Somers had long hoped to host his own variety and chat show. He had stood in for Graham Kennedy on In Melbourne Tonight in 1975 and briefly hosted other programs when their regular presenters were absent. In June 1982, he was given his own Tuesday night TV variety show in the style of The Don Lane Show (which was continuing to run twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays, in the same time slot of 9:30 p.m.) and named The Daryl Somers Show. While Ossie Ostrich was not part of the cast (he did continue to host Hey Hey It's Saturday with Somers throughout the duration of Somers' own show), Ernie Carroll headed the writers' team. This team also included 'heroes of the inner city comedy circuit' Alan Pentland (later a writer for Full Frontal) and Geoff Kelso, soon to be a cast member and writer for The Gillies Report. John Blackman was a regular, as were the voice artist Paul Jennings and music director Geoff Harvey. The show's producer, Peter Wynne, told the Sydney Morning Herald's Richard Coleman that the show would feature many short segments, appeal to the 16-35 age group, and 'offer something like a restaurant's menu.'