Talking Heads

ABC1 Monday, September 27, 2010 @ 6.30pm

This week on TALKING HEADS, Peter Thompson talks to an Adelaide surgeon whose life story has captured the attention of Hollywood.

Craig Jurisevic was 33-years old when he answered a UN call for volunteer doctors to go to the Balkans to treat victims of the Kosovo conflict.

Once there, he was appalled to find corrupt hospital officials were refusing to treat some refugees, and were selling donated medical supplies on the black market. Jurisevic tried unsuccessfully to get the UN leader, Kofi Annan, to intervene and in desperation he used the media to blow the whistle.

I didn’t realise how at risk my life would become by leaking that story but I felt a moral imperative to do so. I couldn’t carry on in the position I was in without doing something

Warned that he was now on a mafia hit-list and with no safe route out of Kosovo, he joined the surgical team of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) effectively crossing the line as a medico.

That was the first moral dilemma. Other dilemmas arose at the front line…I had to let many people die … and the one big issue was the issue of euthanasia, battlefield euthanasia where I had to end a woman’s life at her request under very difficult circumstances.

On TALKING HEADS, Jurisevic reveals the struggle to maintain his moral bearings, and how he feels about those decisions a decade on.

6:30pm – Monday, September 20 on ABC1

Monday, 20 September 2010 This week on Talking Heads, Peter Thompson’s guest is the vivacious cook Poh Ling Yeow.

Yeow is a successful artist, was runner-up on the first series of Masterchef and now has her own show on ABC TV – Poh’s Kitchen.

Despite Yeow’s profile with food and cooking and her art, this was an unlikely path for a shy Chinese Malay Mormon called Sharon.

Born in Malaysia in 1973, Yeow spent the first nine years of her life in Kuala Lumpur. Her family then migrated to South Australia. After graduating in design, she freelanced as a graphic designer and illustrator and then began painting full-time in 2002. Now, with many successful exhibitions under her belt, her client list boasts major corporate collectors.

On Talking Heads Yeow talks about growing up in Malaysia and not fitting in, and then moving to Australia where she also didn’t fit in. So as a young immigrant she tried to shed everything that made her feel different to fit into her new life. Then she didn’t fit into commercial art, and she didn’t fit into the Mormon Church.

But her painting and cooking have brought everything together.

“When I left the church it really did drive a wedge especially between my mum and I. I really saw cooking as a thing that might bring us together again, and it has. It’s really quite amazing,” says Yeow.

It was not until she reached her 30s that she started reaching out to find out more about her ancestors and her culture. And this has largely been through cooking.

TALKING HEADS - ABC1 Monday, September 13, 2010 @ 6.30pm

Richard Branson was just 15-years-old when his headmaster predicted the young rule-breaker would either go to prison or become a millionaire. It was an astute observation. In less than a decade Branson would do both. 

Branson’s high-risk tactics and his love of a challenge have got him into some sticky situations over the years. But at 60, he’s a multi-billionaire, the world’s greatest brand builder, and still very cool.

He tells TALKING HEAD’s Peter Thompson, he was encouraged by his parents from very early on to develop a strong independent streak.

My mother in particular would do things that you would get arrested for today…..she pushed me out of the car aged six on my way to my grandmother’s house, we were about seven miles from my grandmother’s house and she told me to make my own way there….it was very much you’ve got to stand on your own two feet

Aged only 16, Branson began his successful foray into business with a newspaper and then a mail order record venture. This was the start of the ‘Virgin’ brand and a global empire that now, four decades on, spans space travel, airlines, rail, health care, finance, telecommunications and entertainment. 

His much publicised attempts to break boating and hot air balloon records along with some daredevil stunts to promote Virgin have made him one of the most recognised business leaders in the world.

In 1999 he was knighted for his contribution to entrepreneurship. Having recently turning 60, Sir Richard says he has no plans to retire. To celebrate his birthday he ordered 60 new planes, held a party on his privately owned island in the Caribbean and had a go at kite-surfing across the English Channel with his children Holly and Sam.

I have the most incredible life. You know I’m a very fortunate person all in all…I’ve got little to be stressed about, everything to live for.

Sir Richard Branson talks to Peter Thompson about his incredible life and about his less well-known initiatives to create a better world.

6:30pm – Monday, September 6 on ABC1

This week, Peter Thompson’s guest on Talking Heads is one of Australia’s leading cultural commentators – Leo Schofield.

How did the son of a publican from the far west of NSW come to be a cultural arbiter? Bon vivant, writer, critic and festival director, Schofield has been an Australian style-setter since the 60s. He’s been an advertising executive, a food critic at a time when the local restaurant scene first took off, the artistic director of both the Sydney and Melbourne arts festivals, and is known by garden lovers for his restoration of Bronte House and its beautiful garden.

Now 75, Schofield still has tremendous energy and enthusiasm: he’s recently overhauled a Georgian mansion in Tasmania. What’s next?

6:30pm – Monday, August 30 on ABC1

This week on Talking Heads, Peter Thompson’s guest is Fiona McIntosh, an author who has become something of a superstar in the fantasy fiction world.

McIntosh only started writing a decade ago. She was 39 years old and having a mid-life crisis, when one day at the dentist she noticed an ad for a summer writing course in Hobart. Leaving her husband and twin boys at home, McIntosh headed to the Apple Isle, armed with a loose idea for a fantasy book.

By the time she was 40, she had written Betrayal, the first book of a fantasy trilogy, and had a publisher’s contract.

Since then there’ve been more than a dozen adult novels and five children’s books, many of them bestsellers internationally.

Her most recent book Fields of Gold reveals something of the extraordinary lives of McIntosh’s two grandfathers… both great adventurers and both the keepers of intriguing secrets.

6:30pm – Monday, August 23 on ABC1

This week on Talking Heads, Peter Thompson’s guest is Father Bob Maguire.

Father Bob is a Catholic priest, community worker and media personality with a military style motto, ‘no one left behind.’ Although he was handy with a machine gun in his youth, and later became an army chaplain, Father Bob has devoted himself to those who don’t fit the mould for assistance from traditional charities.

South Melbourne’s outspoken ‘fiery priest of the downtrodden’ established Open Family Australia in 1978, and later the Emerald Hill Mission. Open Family has become a national organisation helping children living on the streets.

Last year, Father Bob was asked by church authorities to resign on his upcoming 75th birthday. Controversy ensued… as is often the way with Father Bob!

6:30pm – Monday, August 16 on ABC1

Peter Thompson’s guest is one of Australia’s most successful journalists. For many years the face of Channel Nine, Ray Martin has travelled the world, covered the big stories and interviewed the rich and famous. He’s won five gold Logies, sparked a couple of Royal Commissions, and has been appointed a Member of the Order of Australia.

“I can’t believe this fortunate life I’ve had,” he says.

Martin’s been happily married to Dianne for more than 40 years and they have two beautiful and talented children. It’s a far cry from the young boy whose family once slept at Sydney’s Central Railway station because they were poor and had nowhere else to go.

With an early life marked by poverty and constant upheaval, by the time Martin was eleven years old, he was on the run with his mother from a drunken, violent father. As part of their cover they changed their surname from ‘Grace’ to ‘Martin’.

Martin’s dream as a teenager was, “to open the bowling for Australia against the poms”, but he thought he’d probably become a history teacher. As luck would have it he landed a job at the ABC that changed everything…

“I love history and I devour it now. I just can’t get enough of it but I also want to see history being made rather than report on the way it used to be 200 years ago…I think journalism allowed me to go to places and see history being made,” he says.

Hear more about Ray Martin’s extraordinary life journey this week on Talking Heads.

6:30pm – Monday, August 9 on ABC1

This week on Talking Heads Peter Thompson is joined by John and Ros Moriarty, the husband and wife team behind the brilliantly coloured artwork on Qantas jumbos.

Their company, Balrinji Design Studio, has grown from a kitchen table operation in 1983 to now being Australia’s leading Indigenous art consultancy working across Australia, Japan, Europe and the USA.

The original concept was to create something to celebrate the dual cultural heritage of their three children – young Indigenous Australians with strong connection to their father’s lineage as well as having a firm foundation in mainstream Australian society.

John Moriarty is one of the Stolen Generation. He was just four years old and living in the Gulf of Carpentaria, when his mother was told he was being taken to school for the day – but they didn’t bring him back. Ros Moriarty is a white woman born into a middle class family in Devonport, Tasmania. They met in Canberra where they were both working as public servants and fell deeply in love.

The story of John and Ros Moriarty is one about a love that crossed the boundaries of young and old, black and white, and stolen and found.

6:30pm – Monday, August 2 on ABC1

This week on Talking Heads Peter Thompson’s guest is R&B singer Deni Hines.

Hines grew up in the music industry sitting on the side of the stage while her mother, Marcia, performed around Australia. But she had no intention of becoming an entertainer. She wanted to be a forensic pathologist…that is, until she fell into a modelling contract and left school at 17.

Then, while singing along to the radio at a friend’s house, Hines caught the attention of a member of the pop group Wa Wa Nee and was immediately enlisted to do some backing vocals.

Suddenly, she was a backing vocalist for big names of the Australian music industry – INXS, Kylie Minogue and Jimmy Barnes. It was a launch pad to Deni Hines becoming one of Australia’s most successful and engaging entertainers.

On Talking Heads, find out more about the twists and turns of Hines’s career and life, when she talks about music, men, marriage and Marcia.

6:30pm – Monday, July 19 on ABC1

Talking Heads is profiling one of Sir David Attenborough’s heroes: world-renowned Australian wildlife cinematographer Jim Frazier. Jim has shot for Attenborough’s landmark documentary films including Life on Earth, The Living Planet and Trials of Life.

In the program, Sir David Attenborough praises Jim’s work and the extraordinary lenses Frazier invented.

One of Jim’s lenses revolutionised Hollywood film-making and was used in blockbusters such as Titanic, Jurassic Park and various James Bond movies. It led to Jim being awarded an Emmy and a Technical and Scientific Academy Award. But everything turned sour when Hollywood lawyers nearly bankrupted Jim in a multi-million dollar US court battle over the lens patent. Jim was crushed.

On Talking Heads, Jim Frazier steps out from behind the camera to chat about the highs, lows and secrets of wildlife photography. And he reveals the extraordinary – and sometimes dangerous – lengths he’s gone to in his almost-obsessive pursuit of ‘the shot’.

Jim’s filming career almost never started. As a child he was almost blinded when squirted in the eye with tiger snake venom. Later, as a cinematographer, he had a similar problem with vicious weaver ants that got up his nose and into his eyes.

“That was one of the hardest jobs I’ve ever done in my life,” he tells Peter Thompson. “Constant biting of the ants, so I developed barriers on the lenses so they couldn’t get on the camera because if they did they would get into your eyes – and you would get formic acid squirts in your eyes!” Talking Heads features highlights from Jim’s 40 years of wildlife photography, and unveils his plans for his most ambitious nature series to date.

Jim has filmed around the world, and nature footage for this episode came from far and wide.

Ironically, Mother Nature temporarily delayed the making of Jim’s Talking Heads episode. Some footage was sent by plane from Europe – but its arrival was delayed by the volcanic ash cloud that disrupted air traffic.

Scientist, inventor, naturalist and artist – Jim Frazier is a remarkable unsung Australian success.