REMEMBERING ROSS WARNEKE

Commentator and critic Ross Warneke left you in no doubt about what he thought of a show and why.

IT’S amazing how vividly some things stay in the memory. It’s been nearly two decades since Ross Warneke and I worked together on Green Guide – he as editor, me as eager young scribe – yet the following scene has never been far from my mind. Ross had come to my desk to discuss the piece I’d just filed.

“Nice story, mate, but I don’t quite understand what you’re trying to say in your opening par.”

“What? But I slaved over that par.”

“Yeah. I can tell.”

“It’s all right, though. The point becomes clear in the second paragraph,” I said.

Pause.

“Actually, no. Sorry, mate. It’s not all right. People don’t start reading from the second par. That’s usually when they stop reading, especially when the opening par is as muddled as this one.”

I read it over, saw his point, and offered to rewrite it. Ross had a better idea. He cut it.

It hurt, but it worked.

Ross didn’t like writers mincing their words. He hated posturing. He appreciated the eloquent sentence and the sharp turn of phrase – something he was particularly good at – but Ross knew the difference between good expression and showing off.

“You write for the reader, mate, not for your friends,” he was fond of saying, usually while slam-dunking some fatally overwritten freelance piece into the nearest bin. He didn’t want his writers wasting their words and Ross didn’t want his readers wasting their time.

As a reviewer, Ross was a master of the quick kill. “Something must have been lost in the translation of The Weakest Link”; “I can see no future for Headland”; “The Logies are a mess”.

But for Ross there was a huge difference between healthy scepticism of TV and the fashionable cynicism that infects the writing of so many TV critics. The Ivory Tower never had a greater enemy than Ross.

He despised the “televisually correct”, stuck by shows he thought had promise (he supported All Saints despite its wobbly start) and had a gloriously defiant taste for trash. He championed the importance of keeping an eternally open mind. Ross loved Survivor, Australian Idol and was an early defender of Big Brother.

As an editor he encouraged the notion of reviewers sharing their opinions with program makers, getting their responses and incorporating them in stories. He loved aggressive interviews about shows he thought were bad. And Ross loved going against the grain.

At the height of the political correctness boom in the 1980s, British comedy legend Benny Hill had become the universal whipping boy for PC comedians and commentators, yet his popularity was exploding across the US. Ross felt the need to get his side of the story.

So we landed an exclusive interview with Hill and his producer and set the record straight. Ross then put Benny Hill on the cover of Green Guide – an absolutely heretical idea at the time – because he knew it would upset the right people. That was something else Ross was good at.

I never knew Ross with a bad temper. Some of my fondest memories are of him listening patiently to some strange idea that had occurred to me. If anything, his degree of tolerance still surprises me. But Ross certainly had his off days.

“Don’t shit me today, Schembri,” he would command loudly as he sat down with his morning coffee. But these moods never survived to see lunch, by which time his natural cheeriness would have returned as he joked about yet another incomprehensible freelance piece – “don’t these people actually read the paper?” was one of his favourite expressions – and tore to shreds some ghastly show he’d just seen in the preview room.

Ross was an outstanding writer’s editor, a phenomenon all-too-rare in newsrooms today. He insisted that editors respect their writers and be productive writers themselves. He never spoke theoretically or in vague terms about the art and craft of journalism. He was as specific, as illustrative and as supportive as any young journalist could hope for.

And you had to back your opinions with argument. “People know you’re pissed off with this show,” he’d say. “It’s your job as a writer to explain why.” This is why nobody who ever read or heard a Warneke critique was left in any doubt about what he thought, or why.

Ross had the most infectious smile and a great sense of humour. He had the kind of laugh that made others laugh. He adored comedy and loved the new as much as the old. He embraced Little Britain and, after viewing a Dave Allen DVD, “laughed so much I got a headache”.

But Ross was also very particular about what he thought was funny. He cared little for the undergraduate humour of South Park and The D Generation paid Ross a great compliment when, in response to his laceration of The Late Show, they named a character in a sketch after him.

Of the hundreds of colleagues you deal with throughout your career, only a handful leave a positive and enduring influence on your work. Ross combined talent, wisdom and enthusiasm with an unbridled sense of fun.

He was a great example. I owe him more than I can say.

Jim Schembri 

The Age, Melbourne

August 31, 2006