Paul McDermott

Paul Anthony Michael McDermott (born 13 May 1962) is an Australian entertainer, best known both for Good News Week and for his role as a member of the musical comedy group the Doug Anthony All Stars.

He has frequently appeared at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and taken part in its two major televised productions, the Comedy Festival Gala and the Great Debate.

McDermott has also performed and written numerous shows as a solo performer and authored children’s books and newspaper articles and directed short animated films.

McDermott was born in Adelaide, South Australia, a fraternal twin and one of six children in a Catholic family.

His father, John, was a senior public servant and his mother, Betty, a home manager.

The family moved to Canberra when McDermott was three.

He attended Marist College Canberra, where he describes himself as having been painfully shy and a "bit of a loner"; Dickson College; and the Canberra School of Art at the Australian National University, where he studied art for four years.

He describes painting as his first love, and still considers his final year piece at art school to be his finest work.

Indeed, he only started performing at the age of 25 because he needed money to buy canvases.

"It was either that or waiting on tables and I thought I'd soon get pissed off with people doing that," he says.

Privately, McDermott maintains his interest in art through painting, drawing and hand-crafting books.

He works under the alias of artist 'Young Master Paul'.

He has criticised the war on drugs and society's tendency to ignore the large drug subculture that involves people of all ages.

"It's out there and it happens, but there's still a fear of talking about it," he says.

"In cities like Manchester, with unemployment problems, there are no-alcohol venues where five thousand people under the age of sixteen are eccy'd off their heads every Saturday night."

He has one son with his partner Melissa Lyne.

He is also the first cousin of retired Adelaide Crows AFL footballer and current Adelaide media personality Chris McDermott.

The Doug Anthony All Stars were a singing comedy trio (comprising McDermott, Tim Ferguson and Richard Fidler) who began busking in Canberra in the 1980s and later gained notoriety at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

This led to regular appearances on ABC TV’s The Big Gig, where they gained a strong following.

Their innovative, brash style broke down many taboos of the time, and many Australian comedians have described DAAS as being their inspiration for wanting to become comedians.

McDermott took lead vocals on most songs and wrote much of the material.

The group also starred in their own spin off TV show called DAAS Kapital.

McDermott began busking in 1985, which he says equipped him with useful experience and the ability to cope with most situations when he later started performing in clubs.

He joined a group called Gigantic Fly which performed at a new Canberra club called Cafe Boom Boom.

It was here that he got to know Tim Ferguson and Richard Fidler of the musical comedy group the Doug Anthony All Stars (DAAS).

McDermott was asked to join the group when the third member, Robert Piper, left due to other commitments.

His primary reason for joining, he says, was monetary: "I'd been stealing canvas from the bins around the art school."

Initially busking and performing live in clubs, with McDermott writing the majority of their material and songs, DAAS achieved success at the 1986 Adelaide Fringe Festival and subsequently travelled to Britain for the Edinburgh Fringe festival, where they were nominated for the Perrier Award.

They toured both nationally and internationally, appearing on British television and playing at the opening of the Barcelona Olympics.

After initially struggling to gain success in Australia, in 1989 DAAS was picked up to perform on the ABC show The Big Gig, on which they became a popular feature.

They appeared frequently on the show until 1991, when the group premiered their own series on the ABC, DAAS Kapital, which ran for two seasons.

McDermott says that he liked performing with DAAS because it allowed him to bring together a range of his interests—he got to write, perform, sing, create costumes and paint backdrops.

They broke up in 1995 but later reformed with new guitarist Paul Livingston (replacing Fidler) in 2014 for a series of live shows.

The group split up in 1995 after a final farewell tour of Australia.

Rumours of a falling out among the trio persisted for many years, but all three maintained that they had parted on good terms and that it had simply been time to move on, as they had wanted to pursue careers in different directions.

Ferguson has since revealed that the break-up was in large part due to his being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1995.

In the two years following the break-up of DAAS, McDermott wrote two film scripts and the stage show MOSH!.

He says that he was not particularly interested in returning to comedy, which he came to regard as an "aberration, something that had been good to do for eight years but now it was over," until in 1996 he was recruited as host of the satirical news-based quiz show Good News Week.

In 1996, McDermott was given the role of hosting the ABC's new topical comedy game show Good News Week.

In 2014, McDermott and Tim Ferguson reunited to tour Australia as the Doug Anthony All Stars, with frequent collaborator Paul Livingston (also known as "Flacco") replacing Richard Fidler as guitarist due to Fidler's radio commitments.