MSing About

This time of year always brings up the debate about whether January 26 is Australia Day or Invasion Day. Ian offers his thoughts and looks at some of the Indigenous people who greeted the First Fleet settlers like Bennelong, Pemulwuy, Barangaroo and Bungaree.

Two major recent discoveries... one, that there were 12 black American ex-slaves aboard the First Fleet and one of them, John Randall, sits on a distant branch of the Heydon family tree.

This week’s podcast is MSing About with writing tips and pointers on how to write sketch comedy with a few examples from my archive…

It’s 2025 and the first podcast for the year – it’s time for New Year Resolutions!

It's the final podcast for 2024. There's some general memoir tipping using a memoir I co-wrote with my mate, Dave Prior, who is a musician and comedian. You don't have to be either of those to use the tips, but getting to meet Dave should be enjoyable in itself!

My Christmas has certainly changed since I was a kid. Has yours? Christmas memories can easily find their way into a memoir.

Sometimes nature can serve up a lifetime of memories in just a few seconds, minutes or hours and there's a place in a memoir for such events... could be a cyclone, an eathquake, a green flash, an eclipse or a turtle giving birth.

This week’s memoir podcast is titled Flights of Fancy because it is mainly about crossing paths with two aviation adventurers, Bob Gannon and Dick Smith.

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 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?

The memoir tip in this Write Now podcast is on how to include an event that was special to you growing up.

This memoir chapter introduces a wonderful woman who lived to 101 with the motto, 'life is too short for tepid food or tepid people'.

This week’s podcast is solo with another tip on how to write a memoir and visiting a chapter in Ian's memoir that uses a simple device to look at about ten incidents in his journey in about ten minutes. 

The Write Now podcast this week has a tip for writing a memoir – arguably one of the easiest writing genres to take on because you know the main character pretty well and it doesn’t have to be an extraordinary life to create an entertaining read! 

Not all of us get mentioned in a book, a movie, or a TV show but we all get more than a mention at our own funeral... and chances are that you will be asked to write, deliver or assist in preparing a eulogy for a family member or friend. 

This week, Katrina and Ian catch up to shoot the breeze about putting together a documentary.

It is voting time for the 2024 Focus on Ability Short Film Festival and this podcast is about this year's open film entry, No Strings Attached and the documentary entry, My MS Story. There is also an audio version of the 2021 short film that won the Best Actor Award.