Mike Bowers: ‘We wrote the idea for Talking Pictures on a coaster – thank goodness because we’d had a few drinks’

T he story begins with my being on leave. Barrie Cassidy, who was the original host and the man who really invented ABC’s Insiders, was at the time the European correspondent for the ABC based in Brussels. I had an inordinate amount of time up my sleeve because I’d worked on the Olympics for the Sydney Morning Herald and built up a lot of time owing in lieu.

So I took three months off at the end of 2000 and I was travelling around Europe visiting various friends and acquaintances. And I called in to Brussels to say hello to Barrie and his wife, Heather Ewart. Barrie told me that he was finishing up his posting with the ABC in Europe and that he was coming back to Australia to pitch a program idea to the powers that be at the ABC.

It was to be a political program on a Sunday morning and it was to contain all sorts of things political. And he asked me: what would you put in it as a photographer who has spent a lot of his career photographing politicians? Wendy Harmer: ‘I ran away from the Oscars as fast as I possibly could and fled into the night’ Read more We went out to dinner one night and we were discussing all sorts of things that perhaps the show could contain; Talking Pictures was just one of them.

And we went on a bit of a pub crawl. We were drinking at places called Mort Subite, which means “sudden death”, and The Bank, which was actually a bar in an old bank and it still had all the old vaults there. So Talking Pictures was literally a bit of a drunken idea from the vault. And we wrote it on a coaster – thank goodness because we had a few drinks and I don’t think we might have remembered it.

I still had that coaster for many years. I tried to find it for this series – I wasn’t able to locate it but I think it is at home somewhere. I had no idea that when Barrie would get back to Australia and pitch the programme idea to the ABC, they would say yes. It started in 2001, in July, and Barrie rang me up and he said: “We want to launch Talking Pictures and I want you to give it a go hosting it.” And I was shocked because I thought, well, I’ve got no experience in doing this.

He took a real chance. We had absolutely no idea what we were doing. I ’d always felt still images and cartoons specifically condensed down the quite complicated politics in a way that nothing else quite did. I always felt it was kind of underplayed. My feeling was that there was definitely a market to which we could expose these cartoons and still pictures.

Quite often the thing cemented in people’s minds – like Alexander Downer and the fishnet stockings – was cemented there because of a still picture. And then cartoonists pick up that theme and run with it. It was the still photographers initially that make the political imagery and then it’s a cartoonist that make it stick with the person.

Really the strength and the enduring nature of Talking Pictures is due to the quality of the cartoons and still photos. We are blessed in this country to have some of the finest political cartoonists in the world – we really do. Considering our population, I think we are punching above our weight in terms of the quality of political cartooning.

It’s almost an Australian tradition. Politicians are always very aware of their images, some more so than others. I have had on occasions people get very upset with me for elevating some photo or cartoon that they haven’t liked. And then other times people surprise me, like Philip Ruddock. I went to his house – in the early days we had politicians on Talking Pictures and he had a collection of cartoons, some of which were really cruel to him.

He had them hanging on his kitchen wall and and he said, look, you know, I just like all cartoons involving me. Tony Burke, for instance, says he’ll buy any cartoon that features him with a guitar. So I’m surprised the cartoonists of Australia haven’t worked it out that they can sell a copy of their cartoon to Tony Burke if they draw him with a guitar.

He likes to think of himself as a guitarist and he’s actually quite handy with a guitar. All of them start with wanting to make Australia a better place Photographing politics is a unique skill. You can’t just learn it overnight. And I’m really comfortable doing it. I like doing it. I like a lot of the figures in politics – not all of them.

Obviously there are some pretty objectionable human beings that take up politics from all sides of the spectrum. But mostly, all of them start with wanting to make Australia a better place. They don’t finish up in that position, but a lot of them start there. I think there’s something in the leather on the government side of the benches, and the longer they sit on it, it soaks up their backsides and makes them arrogant.

It happens to politicians from all sides of politics. P eople would say “back to you, Barrie” – my sign off at the end of Talking Pictures – in the weirdest places. I was in a redwood forest in California in the wilds of winter with my children and I got back to you Barrie’d. “Back to you, Barrie” became a thing people used to scream at me in public.

I’d be doing the weekly shopping at Marrickville Metro in Sydney’s inner west and I’d get back to you Barrie’d. Kingsmill the kingmaker: Triple J veteran who shaped Australia’s music tastes for decades departs ABC Read more There wasn’t as much alliteration when David Speers took over because “back to you, David” or “back to you, Speersy” doesn’t quite work as well.

But we still keep up the tradition..