MSing About

This week’s memoir podcast is titled A Few Famous Failures… three joint ventures I shared with an actor mate, Shane Withington.

This week's podcast is about two well-known people who started as colleagues and became friends, Noeline Brown and Kev Golsby... and one venture that almost went very pear-shaped.

Good friends you make on your life journey say a lot about the person you are and they, in turn, contribute to the fabric of your character. This podcast is mainly about a friend I have had for 58 years and the chapter is titled, The Day I Met the Swami.

This podcast tip for writing a memoir chapter is to choose one day in the year that has had an impact on you. It could be Christmas, Valentine's Day, Australia Day or a birthday. My chapter is titled The Day They Call Anzac.

Memoirs should reflect life and, as such, there can be recounting of events that were sad or traumatic. This week’s podcast - The Day My Father Died.

My memoir year in this podcast is 1969. It was the year of Woodstock and Abbey Road, the year Billy Graham converted me to Christianity for a week, the year man landed on the moon, the year I walked the Kokoda Trail and the year my boarding school housemaster disciplined and humiliated me in front of the whole house.

An easy chapter to write in a memoir is looking at your ancestors and how their life journeys led to your own arrival on the planet. In this podcast, some tips and a couple of examples. 

When I was growing up, my mother often said that writers and artists have more mealtimes than meals and that I should aim to get a real job. I became a writer and an artist after sampling a few 'real' jobs en route. This podcast looks at three of those ventures... as a chef in a bistro, as a painter in butcher shops and as a public servant. Sometimes what you did and how you did it says a lot about who you are as a person.

A brush with fame (or in this case, infamy) leads to encounters with other famous people and a bag of mixed lollies.

This week’s podcast is the first chapter in my memoir, The Day I Defied Gravity. I broke four wrists in primary school. This flash of stupidity accounted for two of them. Did you do something stupid in your youth?