''How Green Was My Cactus'' is a daily syndicated Australian radio program that has been broadcast since 1986. It is a political satire in the form of a

radio play Radio drama (or audio drama, audio play, radio play, radio theatre, or audio theatre) is a dramatised, purely acoustic performance. With no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine ...

featuring characters that portray the ministers and shadow ministers of the

Australian parliament The Parliament of Australia (officially the Parliament of the Commonwealth and also known as the Federal Parliament) is the federal legislature of Australia. It consists of three elements: the Monarchy of Australia, monarch of Australia (repr ...

Background

The program is currently produced by Triffique Productions, The director and head writer is Doug Edwards, and it and stars Keith Scott and Robyn Moore, who portray the male and female characters respectively. Each episode lasts two minutes and takes the form of a dialogue between Australian political figures, although the show frequently lampoons other topical subjects, such as sports (particularly cricket) and well-known television advertisements. The music theme for ''How Green Was my Cactus'' was composed by Tony King and David Bates in 1986.

History

The program commenced in 1986 during the tenure of the Labor

Hawke government The Hawke government was the federal executive government of Australia led by Prime Minister Bob Hawke of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) from 1983 to 1991. The government followed the Liberal-National Coalition Fraser government and was su ...

in Australia, and featured

Bob Hawke Robert James Lee Hawke (9 December 1929 – 16 May 2019) was an Australian politician and trade unionist who served as the 23rd prime minister of Australia from 1983 to 1991. He held office as the Australian Labor Party, leader of the La ...

as its main character, although the program usually referred to him as "King Bonza the Charismatic" - a reflection of Hawke's

larrikin Larrikin is an Australian English term meaning "a mischievous young person, an uncultivated, rowdy but good-hearted person", or "a person who acts with apparent disregard for social or political conventions". In the 19th and early 20th centurie ...

image and populist appeal. The title of the show is taken from the family saga movie about Welsh life ''

How Green Was My Valley ''How Green Was My Valley'' is a 1939 novel by Richard Llewellyn, narrated by Huw Morgan, the main character, about his Welsh family and the mining community in which they live. The author had claimed that he based the book on his own experi ...

'' and is a reference to the dramatic,

soap-opera A soap opera (also called a daytime drama or soap) is a genre of a long-running radio or television Serial (radio and television), serial, frequently characterized by melodrama, ensemble casts, and sentimentality. The term ''soap opera'' originat ...

elements that frequently characterize Australian political life. The program is the longest-running radio serial in Australian history (passing the ABC radio drama '' Blue Hills'', which ran for twenty-seven years) and is the longest-running radio serial still being broadcast in Australia today.

Syndication

The program is carried on over fifty radio stations nationally. Typically it is broadcast by smaller

adult contemporary radio Adult contemporary music (AC) is a form of radio-played popular music, ranging from 1960s vocal and 1970s soft rock music to predominantly ballad-heavy music of the 1980s to the present day, with varying degrees of easy listening, pop, soul, ...

stations, which unlike larger FM stations may not have the resources to produce their own in-house variety programs for the morning and evening drive timeslots. Consequently, those syndicated stations often play the program twice during the day, both in the morning and in the evening.

References

External links

* {{official website, https://cactus.com.au/ Australian comedy radio programs 1986 radio programme debuts