The story behind Rubbery Figures
In 1984, an imaginative ABC current affairs producer, Ian Carroll, had the idea of a weekly puppet satire about Australian politics.

Ian Carroll
The ABC didn’t want to use the puppets again. I owned the copyright in the puppet moulds, and I got a small Film Commission grant to make a pilot. To do this I set up a makeshift film studio in my sculpture studio in North Melbourne. It was ridiculously overcrowded.

That’s me doing hand signals to the puppeteers and Matthew McCaughey on the cable Bolex

My brother Michael (left) did brilliantly intuitive cut-out animations
My brother Michael (left) did brilliantly intuitive cut-out animations
This produced a slightly jerky pixillated effect in the film. My brother Michael’s clever snappy animations using cut-up photos of the puppets fitted neatly with the jerky studio movie shots.

Kris Noble

Tony Martin directs Bob Hawke Rubbery figures

Puppeteer Cassie Serpell operating Paul Keating
And we were away, in February 1987, with a series of 13 weekly filler programs of 5 min 30 seconds duration after Rumpole of the Bailey every Monday. Almost immediately we got high ratings.

Puppet wrangler Cynthia Mann with John Elliott and Esther Haskell on Bob Hawke
When Kris Noble left the ABC, we were orphans. Rubbery Figures was stuck on late-at-night after Four Corners. At the end of 1988 we were dropped, and told the ABC had no interest in future programs. I was about to close my studio and disband the brilliant crew of under-paid filmies and slightly crazed puppeteers. At that very moment, Steve Vizard put together the Fast Forward program for Channel 7. Vizard agreed to take four minutes of Rubbery Figures segments each week. On board he had the doyen of comedy directors, Ted Emery. Emery used the Rubbery Figures segments with great flair, cutting in short grabs of Rubbery highlights. The most famous was John Elliott saying “Pigs Arse”, in a script by Brendan Luno.
The Recession We Had to Have
One day in 1991, the advertising jobs that kept my studio afloat dried up. The first thing to be cut in a recession is the advertising budget. My studio broke even on our eight TV Rubbery series, and made a profit only when we did TV ads and commercial videos.
For most of the time I was supporting myself and my family through my other life as a cartoonist for The Age. It was an exhausting period for me, trying to do management, film production, puppet making, sculpture and cartoons. One day our Business Manager found me sitting on the bluestone cobbles in the lane outside my North Melbourne Queensberry Street studio. I couldn’t face opening the door and going in to work. I should have taken a month’s holiday, but instead I closed the film-making side of my studio, forever.
Rubbery Figures Credits
The gifted Melbourne voice mimic Paul Jennings did virtually all the voices for Rubbery Figures in the studio’s tiny recording booth. He would do the voices one after the other, changing voice (and facial expressions) at lightning speed.
The people who worked on Rubbery Figures at different times over six years were:
Scripts: Tony Martin, Andrew Knight, John Alsop, Paul McDonald, Brendan Luno, David Marshall, Gordon Badham, Steve Vizard, Patrick Cook, Michael Nicholson, Rod Quantok, Alan Pentland, Gary McAffery, John Glade-Wright, Kaz Cooke.
Voices: Paul Jennings
Extra Voices: Tony Martin
Script Editing, Voice Direction, Direction: Peter Nicholson
Direction: Peter Nicholson, Leigh Tilson, Matthew Lovering, Matthew McCaughey,
Animation: Michael Nicholson
Art Direction: Cynthia Mann, Jodi Borland, Marion Rennie
Sound: Tony Martin, Piers Douglas, Ray Boseley, Peter Frost, Vince Agostino
Production Manager: Piers Douglas, Esther Haskell, Jan Lucas
Puppeteers: Jenny Sherlock, Esther Haskell, Jenny Ishmakovitch, Michelle Spooner, Cassie Serpell, Astrid Judge, Maeve Vella, Kath Gordon, Rebecca McLean, Cathy Shehata.
Business Manager, Art Direction, Puppet Making, Puppet Wrangling, Unit Producer: Cynthia Mann
Costumes: Trish Simmonds
Costume making and art director: Marion Rennie
Camera: Michael Nicholson, Matthew McCaughey, Leigh Tilson, Gary Richards
Editing: Tony Patterson, Clayton Jacobson, Leigh Tilson , Aleksi Vellis, Catherine Birmingham, Virginia Murray.
Caricature Sculpture: Peter Nicholson
Sculpture and Moulds: Smiley Williams
Sculpture Assistance: Peter Degaris, Lisa Caldwell, Jeffrey Smart.
Equipment: Peter Watt, Tim Robinson, Paul Myers.
Producer: Peter Nicholson