The Mick Molloy Show

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The Mick Molloy Show was a television program that appeared on the Nine Network in Australia for just eight weeks during 1999. The host, Mick Molloy, was a widely acclaimed comedian from The Late Show and Martin/Molloy. The program's running time (less commercial breaks) was approximately 1 hour 50 minutes.

The show essentially took a laidback, easygoing chat variety format, with a set comprising a couple of couches, a coffee table and resident band. The regular weekly guest band, featuring acts not normally seen on commercial television, added to the musical interludes. All this was combined with a some pre-recorded sketches, movie reviews, a sport segment, regular guests and local comedians to create a relaxed, urban/warehouse vibe. The lead-in shows were Hey Hey It's Saturday and The Pretender.

The premise of the show was that some mates would gather together on a pair of couches on a Saturday night. It was a variety show, with comedy and musical performances.

At the time The Mick Molloy Show was in pre-production, the popular comedy movie Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me had just been released, featuring the character Mini-me. In the debut episode, Tony Martin brought many gifts for Mick for his first show, including a new sidekick for Mick called Mini-Mick, a vertically challenged replica of Mick, parodying Mini-me. Mini-Mick was played by Arthur Serevetas (often credited as 'Arthur Penn'). Mini-Mick's catchphrase was "Blow it out your arse!" and was generally a more vulgar version of Mick, often yelling obscenities at people. Mini-Mick appeared in all eight episodes of The Mick Molloy Show.

Assisting Molloy in this live-to-air two-hour shambles were his comedy cronies Tony Martin, Judith Lucy, Bob Franklin and Dave O'Neil, bandleader Paul Hester and The Largest Living Things, film critic Leigh Paatsch, Puppetry of the Penis star Simon Morley and Channel Nine stalwart Pete Smith.

Some of the show's guests included Glenn Robbins, Mark Little, Alan Davies, Stephen Curry, Ben Folds Five, Spiderbait, The Fauves, Mach Pelican, Colin Hay and Stephen Cummings.

In its short time on air, the program caused considerable controversy. The very first sketch of the show portrayed Molloy appearing to be drunk, and supposedly urinating on the set with his back to camera. The show was widely panned by critics, and generated many complaints.

The show was originally contracted for 20 episodes, but was taken off air after the eighth. In that time, Molloy was reportedly paid over A$1 million.^[1]