In this clip from Episode 6 of the Game Changers: Radio podcast, Mick Molloy explains to Craig Bruce the origins of Martin/Molloy and its instant success.

After gaining a national profile through the success of the TV show The Late Show in 1992–93, Tony Martin and Mick Molloy decided to pitch the idea of a comedy drive show to their former radio station (of the D-Generation Breakfast Show), Triple M in Melbourne. Although they felt that Triple M’s audience would suit their style of humour, the station decided to pass.

Eventually the station across the street, Fox FM (who were part of the Austereo network at the time), gave it the green light at the start of 1995. Even though the mix between their brand of humour and commercial dance music was an odd one, the show was an instant ratings success.

Despite the success on Fox FM, years later, many still think that they heard the show on Triple M. As Tony Martin explained to Radio Today in 2018, ‘I’ve even had the chairman of Austereo – when we were doing Get This (in 2006–07) – say to me, “I always said you and Mick were the heart and soul of Triple M”. I had to remind him that we weren’t on Triple M.’

In this excerpt from an oral history interview with Tony Martin, he talks about 'Radio Gladiators' and the general style of Martin/Molloy.  

Martin/Molloy fused a mix of both pre-recorded sketches and live material. The latter was often a combination of scripted sketches, interviews with a wide variety of guests and audience participation segments.

'Radio Gladiators' was one such segment that allowed the hosts to joke about a specific ‘silly’ topic and then ask their audience to call in with their own jokes, creating an ingenious way for the audience to feel like they were a part of the show.

Paul Harris interviewed Tony Martin for the NFSA Oral History program in 2012 and 2013. 

Politics was a major focus for comedy on the show and Martin/Molloy cleverly juggled smart political satire with low-brow humour.

The show often showcased Tony Martin’s comedically exaggerated impressions of politicians. 

A regular segment was 'Mick Molloy’s Celebrity Corner', where Mick adopted a rare ‘straight-man’ role and interviewed Tony impersonating a celebrity, often a politician. 

A frequent target in 1995 was then-Prime Minister Paul Keating, here joining Mick a week after his government handed down the federal budget.

Each episode of Martin/Molloy would consist of several prerecorded sketches, regularly satirising pop culture of the time and often using commercial music. 

Even though these sketches were some of the show’s funniest, they didn’t find their way on to their three compilation albums due to rights issues. 

Using musical cues in a repetitive way was a regular trope in these sketches and it is used to brilliant effect in this parody of the tabloid newsmagazine show, Entertainment Tonight. 

The repeated audio snippet in this clip is from Robert Palmer's 'Simply Irresistible', a No. 1 hit in Australia in 1988. It's cleverly used as shorthand to conjure the audience's memories of the song's video clip.

The music video was one of a series of instantly iconic (and much parodied) film clips in which Palmer fronted a band of female supermodels in identical outfits, nonchalantly pretending to play the song's backing track.

The duo had a philosophy that they wanted Martin/Molloy to be as entertaining and as fully-packed as comedies on television like The Late Show. As a result, like that show, sketches formed a large part of Martin/Molloy. 

Tony Martin explained to Craig Bruce on the Game Changers: Radio podcast in 2016 that he wanted Martin/Molloy to be ‘a show, not a shift. The breakfast shift is (something where) people might hear 20 minutes… We’re going, we don’t want that. If we’re going to do all these fancy sketches and spend all day writing these jokes, and cut up all these interviews, we want people to hear the whole thing like a TV show.’ 

Tony’s 'Murder Plot' is an example of one of these 'fancy sketches' which is full of sound effects and uses background music as a key ingredient – Supertramp's 'The Logical Song' is the butt of one of the jokes. It also includes a cameo from their producer, Peter Grace (Gracie), who was often roped into their sketches. 

In this clip, Tony Martin and Mick Molloy parody the title of the Windows 95 computer operating system, although the sketch is more like a prank on unsuspecting motorists during peak hour – and also features some of Mick Molloy’s trademark yelling. 

Although their on-air banter sounded improvisational, most of their live performances were well prepared.

On the Game Changers: Radio podcast in 2016, Tony Martin explained that, 'people would always come in to see Martin/Molloy being done and they’d think, “This is going to be hilarious” and there’s just two guys sitting there with Spirax notebooks reading things out like they’re doing an old radio play'. 

Although there were elements to the show that were completely improvisational, sketches like this one likely were not.

In this clip from Episode 6 of the Game Changers: Radio podcast, Mick Molloy describes to Craig Bruce a typical Martin/Molloy workday and the factors that helped make the show a success.

Martin/Molloy’s initial success came down to two major factors – the writing talents of the duo and the intense production schedule of the show. Although Tony Martin and Mick Molloy proved on The Late Show that they were excellent performers, both felt that writing was their strongest suit and if they focused on that, the show would succeed.

However, as they wanted the show to be fast-paced and include sketches and interviews, production was also a key element. The sketches and interviews were carefully edited to ensure all pre-recorded segments were tight and that the show was as entertaining as possible.

In this excerpt from an oral history interview with Tony Martin, he talks about why he and Mick Molloy ended Martin/Molloy from his point of view.

After four years of Martin/Molloy, and at the peak of their popularity, the duo decided to walk away. Although there was a perception that a two-hour radio program meant a short workday, the reality was very different.

Speaking to Craig Bruce on the Game Changers: Radio podcast in 2016, Mick Molloy described the typical 12-hour workday necessary to put the show together:

‘We were in there every morning about 9[am], then we started to read papers, then we started writing sketches, then we would start writing our spots … We would pre-record elements of the show … There was so much production and so we would produce everything that needed to be produced prior to that show. And then immediately after the show which was [at] 6, we would go in and put down the sketches for the following day… Sometimes we would get out of there at 9 at night.’ 

As a result, by the end of 1998, they were both exhausted.

Paul Harris interviewed Tony Martin for the NFSA Oral History program in 2012 and 2013. 

One of the most memorable series of sketches on the show was 'Tum and Phul', the presenters of a fictitious New Zealand morning radio show.

These sketches provided Tony Martin an opportunity to poke fun at his New Zealand heritage and accent, exaggerating these to a comedic nth degree by featuring a preponderance of words with a flattened 'i' sound.

These sketches have become some of the best known from the show, partly due to several of them being included on the Martin/Molloy compilation albums.

In this sketch, the New Zealand accent certainly gets a working over with the duo attempting to outsmart the New Zealand film commissioner. 

Radio and television voice-over artist Pete Smith was involved with the duo on all of their projects beginning with their radio show Bulltwang in 1990. 

He was heavily involved in a variety of roles all throughout Martin/Molloy, from show announcer to appearing as himself in sketches, often sending up his own image as the voice of Channel 9 and announcer for the quiz show Sale of the Century (and spokesperson for Copperart). 

In this sketch, Pete presents a new 'youth culture' segment that unsurprisingly goes haywire. In it, he namechecks current rock sensations Silverchair and UK boy band Take That.

'We're almost scratching our heads to come up with new things for Pete to do,' Tony Martin told The Age in 1996. 'It's as if he's entrusted us with his public image: "Here it is! Take it out for a driiive and get it back in one pieeece!"'.

One of the most memorable 'Radio Gladiators' segments was when contestants were asked to do an impression of Jimmy Barnes (with a special guest contestant appearing at the end!). 

'Radio Gladiators' was a major part of Martin/Molloy, consisting of members of the public phoning in to compete with an idea based on a specific theme, with the winner receiving a prize. 

Tony Martin told Radio Today in 2018 that it ‘was the first thing of that type on the radio. Now every show is “call in with your worst birthday present” or “call in with your worst weekend party.” All those ideas, that wasn’t really a thing on radio. There wasn’t really a call in on one topic. If you did a phone in, it was almost at random. Just have five random phone calls. We would go, “Let’s have five people call in with the same topic.”’ 

This sketch satirises radio advertising techniques and comments on the cultural appropriation and commodification of Rastafari culture common in ads of the time. At the end of the sketch, cultural stereotypes come back to haunt Tony Martin’s character. 

Pre-recorded sketches were a major part of Martin/Molloy and fake advertisements were common. 

Tony Martin channelled his skills and frustrations from his early job in radio copywriting to produce pitch-perfect parodies of tropes and trends in radio advertising. 

On the Extreme Vetting podcast with The Chaser in 2020, Tony explains that ‘my job was (writing) 120 x 30-second radio ads a week, so you come up with six good ones, and the rest would be, “Thinking About Carpet?”. Or, when you ran out of Thinking Abouts, the other one was, "There’s never been a better time."' 

This excerpt features Tony Martin and Mick Molloy on stage at the 1996 ARIA Awards accepting the award for Best Comedy Release for their debut album of material taken from Martin/Molloy, The Brown Album.

Mick acknowledges the show’s toilet humour, as well as announcing the title of their 'difficult second album', Poop Chute. 

The album was extremely popular, receiving gold accreditation by ARIA for selling 35,000 copies.

Even in a short awards acceptance speech, you get a sense of what made Martin/Molloy work as a comedy team. Tony's sharp wit – it takes the audience a few seconds to catch up to his Wiggles quip – is complemented beautifully by Mick's more laidback and affable comic style.

During the four years of Martin/Molloy there were two Federal Australian elections, both of which provided seemingly endless comedic content for the duo. 

Several sketches were created on the topic of the 1996 election between Paul Keating and John Howard, aided by Tony’s impressionist skills.

In this sketch, popular culture and politics become intertwined, with ‘Al Pacino’ as Paul Keating and ‘Robert De Niro’ as John Howard in an amusing retelling of the final election debate of 1996. 

Pacino and De Niro had recently been paired for the first time, with great fanfare, in the movie Heat (Michael Mann, USA, 1995) which opened in Australian cinemas on 15 February 1996.

Content warning: this clip contains homophobic language.

This Martin/Molloy sketch parodies the ubiquity of prolific horror writer Stephen King.

Elaborate sketches were a major part of Martin/Molloy but were extremely time consuming. 

As Tony explained to Radio Today in 2018, 'We would commandeer a production studio for six hours a day (and) would often spend three days on a sketch that went one minute fifty. You play it once or twice and it’s gone. It’s not seen as very time effective.' 

From 1996 to 1998, the sketches were produced by Vicki Marr, who Tony rates as invaluable. '… [B]y year two we were wanting to be much more ambitious and elaborate with our sketches. Vicki was the key to making that work.' 

This sketch is a great example of these production techniques and allows Mick to take his interviewer character into a different setting – in this case, the 'palatial home' of King in Connecticut, complete with butler. 

Martin/Molloy often featured parodies of popular and not-so-popular films, this one belonging solidly in the latter category.

The Island of Dr. Moreau (John Frankenheimer, USA, 1996) was filmed in Australia and starred Marlon Brando, and the film as well as its star were regular comedy fodder on the show during 1996.

This is another example of a sketch which did not make the compilation albums due to rights issues, but the music of Dr. Hook was a key component in illustrating the ridiculous scenario of the sketch. 

The clip features snippets of several Dr. Hook hits, including 'Walk Right In' (1977), 'Sexy Eyes' (1977), 'Only Sixteen' (1975), 'Better Love Next Time' (1979), 'Sharing the Night Together' (1978), 'Baby Makes Her Blue Jeans Talk' (1981) as well as ELO's 'Livin' Thing' (1976).

Tony Martin and Mick Molloy have discovered that the Premier of Tasmania, Tony Rundle, has declared David Boon Day to honour the famous Tasmanian cricketer. To make sure that all Tasmanians are celebrating, they call a pub in Launceston.  

Tony and Mick often used phone calls as another element in creating a sketch. The theme might relate to a current news event, although the link between that and the business involved would occasionally be a stretch, creating a somewhat confused but comedic result. 

Although the duo were usually well-prepared, the phone call segments were also a good showcase of Tony and Mick’s improvisational skills as well as their comedic chemistry. 

Although the 'Radio Gladiators' segment was aimed at getting people to call up about the topic of the day, Mick and Tony put a lot of effort into how to introduce the topic – which they referred to as the solicit.

As Tony Martin explained in an interview with Radio Today in 2018, ‘It was really just for the solicit … the first part of it (where) we would do a bunch of jokes on that topic. Then we would go, “Now let’s see if the caller’s got a story like that.” Often one of the callers would be a fake caller or would be one of our characters from the show. Even the phone-in was just to try and get us to more comedy.’ 

In this example, the topic is cloning, with Tony referring to Ian Kiernan’s Clean Up Australia Day campaign which leads to an elaborate sketch within the solicit. 

Another production technique often utilised on Martin/Molloy was cutting up real interviews and inserting questions from Tony or Mick to create a fake interview with a real person.

As Tony explained to Radio Today in 2018, ‘There was a lot of chopping up interviews from TV and changing the questions … You had to sit there with a VHS recorder and tape the news that night and then go through it and find lines from John Howard that you could misuse. It would seem like an incredibly primitive process for people doing radio shows now to see us doing it.’ 

This clip is an example of that technique but, rather than John Howard, the target is Pauline Hanson. She came to the public’s attention at the 1996 federal election and was regularly parodied on the show thereafter. 

It should be noted that the sketch also references ‘Baby’ John Burgess who was a popular game-show host in the 1990s. 

In this excerpt from the 1997 ARIA Awards, Tony Martin and Mick Molloy accept their second ARIA award for Best Comedy Release for their compilation album Poop Chute. 

Tony specifically praises the work of Pete Smith and encourages the audience to give an extra round of applause for him.

While Tony handles the customary thank yous – as well as throwing in a few quick jokes of his own – Mick's closing contribution to the acceptance speech is a humorous non sequitur that the audience knows not to take seriously.

Although the duo did win a third ARIA Award in 1999 for Eat Your Peas, they did not accept that award in person. 

Like The Brown Album (1996), Poop Chute was accredited gold by ARIA for selling 35,000 copies. Eat Your Peas (1999) did even better, being accredited platinum for selling 70,000 copies.

This clip is also a good example of the high production values brought to live broadcasting by Australian crews with multiple cameras, quality live vision switching and excellent sound capturing the moment.

In 1996, Melbourne artist Dillon Naylor approached Tony Martin and Mick Molloy about the idea of making a comic book based on the show.

As Dillon explained to the Champagne Comedy website in 2015, ‘I did a complete story and intercepted both of them in the elevator of Triple M, giving me a captive audience to deliver the pitch. They were scared at first, then registered mild amusement and took the mock-up and said they’d get back to me. Many months elapsed and then Mick rang out of the blue and apologised for forgetting about it and basically gave me permission’.

Although they didn’t contribute any material, they were happy to give Dillon carte blanche in the creation of the comic.

Not only did the comic feature Tony and Mick, but also other fan favourites like Pete Smith and Blimpy, the Lactose Intolerant Cat.

It even included their famous shed on the rooftop of the Austereo building which the duo used to distance themselves from the radio executives, both physically and figuratively.

While only three comic books were published, because of a lack of funds for printing, they tell a unique part of the Martin/Molloy story.

In 1996, Melbourne artist Dillon Naylor approached Tony Martin and Mick Molloy about the idea of making a comic book based on the show.

As Dillon explained to the Champagne Comedy website in 2015, ‘I did a complete story and intercepted both of them in the elevator of Triple M, giving me a captive audience to deliver the pitch. They were scared at first, then registered mild amusement and took the mock-up and said they’d get back to me. Many months elapsed and then Mick rang out of the blue and apologised for forgetting about it and basically gave me permission’.

Although they didn’t contribute any material, they were happy to give Dillon carte blanche in the creation of the comic.

Not only did the comic feature Tony and Mick, but also other fan favourites like Pete Smith and Blimpy, the Lactose Intolerant Cat.

It even included their famous shed on the rooftop of the Austereo building which the duo used to distance themselves from the radio executives, both physically and figuratively.

While only three comic books were published, because of a lack of funds for printing, they tell a unique part of the Martin/Molloy story.

Like Paul Keating before him, once John Howard became prime minister he was frequently in the crosshairs of Martin/Molloy and became a regular ‘guest’ on 'Mick Molloy’s Celebrity Corner'.

Even more than Keating, Howard’s persona became, as he states in this clip, ‘an exaggerated cartoon character'. 

Tony Martin told The Sydney Morning Herald in 2010, ‘We were constantly getting death threats from Pauline Hanson supporters, Pauline Hanson, John Howard, Mal Colston and Paul Keating; that was half our show. It was quite opinionated, and we didn’t go out of our way to ingratiate ourselves with listeners.’  

Inspired by the Egyptian-themed Sphinx Hotel in Geelong, Tony and Mick put out the call for listeners to nominate their Seven Wonders of Australia.

The responses included a Talking Tram in Bendigo, Victoria; travelators in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales; and a Yowie statue in Kilcoy, Queensland.

To commemorate this special collection, the duo put together a new version of the national anthem which celebrated all seven ‘wonders’. 

Tony Martin and Mick Molloy were very selective about the guests they allowed on the Martin/Molloy show, which infuriated station management. 

For example, as Mick Molloy stated on the Game Changers: Radio podcast in 2016, ‘…one day, we had a stand-up argument (with management) because we didn’t want to interview Celine Dion and they couldn’t work it out … Our show’s not going to rise or fall on whether we interview Celine Dion.’ 

They much preferred to host lower-profile guests that they knew they gelled with, such as local musician Dave Graney and former Crowded House drummer Paul Hester (1959–2005). 

Occasionally Paul would come on the show to promote something, but most of the time he would just be joining the duo for a yack, usually about his shed. In 1998 and 1999, Paul hosted a TV show on the ABC called Hessie’s Shed on which both Mick and Tony occasionally appeared. 

In this clip, Paul, in his unique style, talks about how he was asked to go to Adelaide at late notice for a one-off gig playing drums with Midnight Oil, filling in for regular drummer Rob Hirst. 

Sketches on Martin/Molloy often featured highly-specific references to obscure parts of cinema. 

There was a danger that some references may go over the audience’s heads, but they were presented in a fashion that made the audience feel like they were in on the joke without necessarily having the knowledge behind it. 

In this clip, along with some obscure film references, cinema chains themselves come into the firing line. This excerpt also features Vicki Marr’s excellent production skills and, of course, the great voice-over work of Pete Smith. 

Tony Martin is name-checking real films in this clip, although he doesn't refer to A Thousand Acres (Jocelyn Moorhouse, USA, 1997 – starring Jessica Lange and Michelle Pfeiffer) or City of Angels (Brad Silberling, USA, 1998 – a remake of Wings of Desire), by their actual titles.

Judith Lucy, former colleague of Tony Martin and Mick Molloy from The Late Show, also appeared as a regular guest on Martin/Molloy during its four-year run. 

Her segments usually consisted of making fun of the outrageous articles in tabloid magazines such as New Idea or Women’s Day. 

In 1998, she co-hosted the Austereo radio show Foxy Ladies with author Kaz Cooke and both were regular guests on Martin/Molloy on the final year of the show. 

Foxy Ladies ended at the same time Martin/Molloy was finishing up and, in this clip, they come to say goodbye to Tony and Mick with a special present. 

By the end of 1998, Tony Martin and Mick Molloy were exhausted. 

Even though the show was still extremely successful and they were offered a large amount of money to continue, Tony told Radio Today in 2018 that ‘I think by the end of the fourth year, we were just so tired that we went, “Well, we could do another year, but people are gonna say it’s not as good as it used to be.” We just didn’t wanna hear anyone say that.’ 

Mick Molloy stated on the Game Changers: Radio podcast in 2016 that ‘we kind of boxed ourselves into a corner because we couldn’t do something not as good… It was a mutual thing. We both looked at each other and went “I don’t know if I can do this again next year” and we went, "yep, done."' 

The final episode aired on 4 December 1998 and featured special guests including a live performance by Simon Morely and David 'Friendy' Friend from the ‘Puppetry of the Penis’ stage show. 

This excerpt also features the regular team of Pete Smith, Peter Grace, Sancia Robinson and Vicki Marr and is the very last Martin/Molloy sketch that went to air.