Dubbed ‘The King’ early in his lengthy reign over Australian airwaves, nobody’s ever come close to dethroning Graham Kennedy.

Misleadingly titled, this isn’t the marvellous Tony Satler-produced tribute to Gra-Gra of 2000 which actually bore this name originally, rather it’s an interview session with the man of the Lego hair, Ray Martin, produced in 1994 to celebrate The King’s 60th birthday (and to attract viewers to Packerville, of course), with a little up-to-date stuff added. Mercifully there isn’t a whole lot of Ray, an inadvertent blessing apparently due to a certain potty-mouthed obstreperousness on behalf of the show’s subject during filming, although when he does hog the screen it’s not at all difficult to detect an air of participatory reluctance from his interviewee, the man everybody’s actually tuned in to see.

Ossie Ostrich with more talented company than later in his career...

As is the way with these things, the bulk of the programme consists of clips from Mr. Kennedy’s phenomenal sovereignty over our airwaves, featuring more than the occasional other familiar face to have accompanied us through our lives at various points. Grabs from the classic In Melbourne Tonight and later returns to the screen under various titles (but with the same basic, tried and true formula) feature heavily – from Vaudevillian sketches to often crazed ad spots to good old spontaneous silliness – while later affairs such as Blankety Blanks, Australia’s Funniest Home Videos (yes, we have him to blame for foisting that abomination upon us) and the nightly Graham Kennedy’s News Show/Coast to Coast featuring much less prominently. The bulgy-eyed one’s movie career is also mentioned pretty much in passing.

And yes folks, that infamous crow call makes an appearance.

With bits and bobs of footage cobbled together from various sources such as ancient videotape, film and even Kinescope, those expecting pristine vision are faaaaarrrrking bonkers. The Ray-infested bits naturally look better, while otherwise we’re in for a bumpy ride through a display of pretty much every type of video-invading gremlin known to the ocular senses.

Sound, too, comes with much the same warning. While older footage is often accompanied by harshness, crackles and pops (snap was given the night off), once we catch up to the mid-‘70s and beyond things fare better.

While the main presentation is scarcely a fitting tribute to Mr. Kennedy, the extras package helps atone for such impertinence. Five chapters labelled Classic Kennedy present us with a number of sketches cobbled from the early ‘70s tonight shows, running for just over three quarters of an hour. This is kept company by what is claimed to be “the very first IMT in its entirety�, an extremely exciting prospect. Sadly, it’s actually the 1853rd (we’d say “close�, however…), which was the first episode taped in the “Rolls Royce of studios�, the newly constructed studio nine at Channel 9’s Richmond HQ (which had previously been both a piano and Heinz factory.) Running for almost an hour and a half, pop culture buffs will no doubt be fascinated by what television was like in 1964; lacking virtually anything in the way of slickness or polish, and featuring interminable outbreaks of show tunes and even ballet. Still, the basic formula which survives today, just with an overabundance of slickness, is certainly in evidence - unfortunately the only person to get the format really right ever since has been The King’s obvious successor, the boundlessly talented Shaun Micallef, however we all know about how many minutes his superb and reverential remix of the traditional tonight show formula lasted. Compare that to IMT’s reign that saw it grow well into its teens and it says a lot about modern television - but nothing at all nice.

Any Graham Kennedy on DVD is, of course, a good thing; however this sub-one hour piece doesn’t come close to paying deserved tribute to a man who has injected so much joy into the lives of so many Australians since the 1950s – even if he wasn't entirely sure what he was doing, or indeed how or why he was doing it. He was, is and always will be a true national treasure.