Daryl Somers

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.

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.

His parents and brothers had changed their name from Schulz to Somers by 1970.

Somers started professional TV work on 14 July 1971, after being spotted by Ernie Carroll and invited to audition.

His audition consisted of him doing an impersonation of Mr Magoo.

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').

The first of these was on 23 August 1971, for a week's programming under the title Holiday Carnival.

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 glove 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.

In its initial incarnation, Hey Hey screened for 28 years (1971–99) on the Nine Network across Australia.

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.

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 began on Cartoon Corner, he began hosting additional children's shows on GTV-9.

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, 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.

In 1980, Somers replaced Tony Barber on the quiz show Family Feud and hosted the program for three years and 713 episodes.

In June 1982, he was given his own night-time TV variety show in the style of The Don Lane Show, named The Daryl Somers Show, which ran for 18 months.

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 pm Saturday evening timeslot, a later and longer version of the Daryl and Ossie Show from 1978.

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 pm 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.

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 including the Newbeat Brass and a group playing music in the style of Herb Alpert which began under the name "Pasquale and his Mexican Rhythm".

It was either Newbeat Brass or another group, Somerset, which appeared on GTV-9's talent-quest program New Faces, winning their way to the finals only to be beaten by John Williamson.