The 12th Man Biography
Australian entertainment history was effectively rewritten a decade ago by a clever Australian conceptualist with a wicked wit, a predilection for playing with words and an outstanding art for mimicry, who was able to deftly tickle the national funnybone by 'borrowing' the persona of a revered icon and imbuing it with an unexpected verbal dexterity and dimension.
The conceptualist was Billy Birmingham who, as The 12th Man, became one of the most successful spoken-word recording artists in the world (certainly the most successful in Australia, ever).
The icon was and indeed still is cricketing legend Richie Benaud, who became the thematic centre piece of a string of phenomenally popular comedy masterpieces which have sold in quantities beyond the reach of all but Australia's ranking rock royalty. Into Benaud's stoically accommodating mouth and those of fellow cricket playing and commentating legends Tony Greig, Max Walker, Bill Lawry, Ian Chappell, Bruce McAvaney etc, Birmingham has placed words their mothers would probably have washed out with soap, as well as quips, twists, stumbles, responses, asides and observations which they could only ever have dreamed of unleashing within the vicinity of the microphone.
Tied together with artful timing and a glorious sense of the absurd, they have sent cricket fans into involuntary spasms. Such is The 12th Man cult, that his most inspiring utterances have become part of the language. Kids hurl them across playgrounds, adults across workplaces.
That particular ability to coin phrases and expressions that will live long after him, began before Birmingham became the 12th Man. In 1983 this irreverent former French and Latin student who has "good memories of taking the mickey out of teachers" and carried around in his head "a cartload of one-liners I had for years" fashioned a series of puns into a comedy monologue for an abrasive and affronting stand-up comedian he was then managing.
Australiana by Austen Tayshus spent 13 weeks at number 1 (beaten in almost 50 years of Australian chart history by only two other acts, The Beatles and Abba, who held the summit for 15 weeks each) and sold more than 300, 000 copies, becoming the biggest domestic-selling Australian single of all time.
Although he then (and to a large extent, now) saw himself as a backroom boy, the former record company executive, jingle writer (his 'How Do Ya Feel?' radio campaign for Tooheys won many awards), television commercial producer, commercial creative consultant and jack-of-more-trades-than-we-can-go-into-here approached the microphone himself the following year to record the ingenious It's Just Not Cricket, an EP which stormed straight into number one and sold more than a quarter million units (almost quad-platinum).
"When I set about recording it," he would later recall, "I only had about one page of scribbled notes". Three years later, in 1990, it was back to number 1 with the triple platinum The 12th Man Again album.
The nineties continued to be kind to Birmingham. In February 1992 the musical single Marvellous, by The 12th Man featuring M.C.G Hammer (and also featuring premier league rock heroes Jimmy Barnes, John Farnham, Glen Shorrock and Diesel) was a number one platinum single.
In December of the same year, a third album Still The 12th Man, became the fastest-selling Australian artist recording EMI has ever handled, selling more than 200,000 units in a matter of weeks.
The fourth album Wired World Of Sports 2 did even better. Released in early December 1994, Wired World Of Sports 2 won the ARIA for Highest Selling Album and Best Comedy Album. Rather than (as is usually the case with comedy projects) the joke wearing thin, it has seemed to take on more potency, albeit by moving beyond its initial cricket restraints onto a wider sporting panorama.
On the surface, the 'secret' of The 12th Man recordings appears obvious take a highly visible hero speaking a familiar and serious line and slip in the magic word for the squeaky clean hero to say.
"I really like the impact the swearing has" says Birmingham. "And so do the punters. They all reckon it's exactly what the commentators would say if they weren't on live TV."
But that is merely a component of an extraordinary tapestry of nuances, satire, parody and clever creation. There is also a startling array of Indian and Pakistani names which seem to take on lives on their own.
"I've had a lot of fun with names," explains Birmingham, "Because I've laughed for years at the commentary team's attempts to wrap their tongues around some of the pronunciations."
The entire cricketing and sporting fraternity cop one giant serve from The 12th Man but none with quite the meticulous attention (and, no doubt, affection) as Benaud.
"Richie's wife said I had him down to a tee," Birmingham reveals, "and he's usually pretty cool about all the stuff I've done. He's said in interviews that he thinks I do a very good job, which is great because, at the end of the day Richie is definitely the man from whom the most piss has been extracted. Thankfully Richie realises that all this is just the figment of some idiot's fertile imagination. He often sends me a written critique of my records, his common complaint being that I swear too much."
These days Richie has become, thanks largely to The 12th Man, a huge cult figure. He's probably one of the most imitated people in Australia. "It's incredible" says Birmingham "Everyone has a go at doing Richie these days, men, women, kids, even little furry animals!"
The 12th Man releases are languidly paced, like a good game of cricket, with a new album appearing every three or four years. In fact, they seem to be perfectly calibrated to the point when all Australian sporting fans scratch their heads and mutter "Gee, we haven't heard from the 12th man bloke for a while, have we?"
It is that cue which prompts the release of a new audio adventure constructed in a Bowral (Sir Bradman's boyhood turf) home studio by Birmingham and his indispensable co-producer, composer and sounding board David 'Froggy' Froggatt.
The recording process, Birmingham has revealed, "Takes several weeks of fear and loathing and eating pizzas and staying up to ungodly hours, putting down hundreds of voices and sound effects."
'The Final Dig' was released in 2001. Set during that summer's one day competition featuring Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, The 12th Man asked the million dollar question, who will the Channel 9 Commentary Team Selection Committee choose as the new Commentary Team Captain if and when Richie Benaud retires to his vineyard estate, "Verdaflore", in the South of France. In the running for the guernsey are all the current commentary team of Bill Lawry, Tony Greig, Mark "Tubby" Taylor, Ian Healy and Ian Chappell.
The 12th Man's most current album, Boned! was released in 2006.
The conceptualist was Billy Birmingham who, as The 12th Man, became one of the most successful spoken-word recording artists in the world (certainly the most successful in Australia, ever).
The icon was and indeed still is cricketing legend Richie Benaud, who became the thematic centre piece of a string of phenomenally popular comedy masterpieces which have sold in quantities beyond the reach of all but Australia's ranking rock royalty. Into Benaud's stoically accommodating mouth and those of fellow cricket playing and commentating legends Tony Greig, Max Walker, Bill Lawry, Ian Chappell, Bruce McAvaney etc, Birmingham has placed words their mothers would probably have washed out with soap, as well as quips, twists, stumbles, responses, asides and observations which they could only ever have dreamed of unleashing within the vicinity of the microphone.
Tied together with artful timing and a glorious sense of the absurd, they have sent cricket fans into involuntary spasms. Such is The 12th Man cult, that his most inspiring utterances have become part of the language. Kids hurl them across playgrounds, adults across workplaces.
That particular ability to coin phrases and expressions that will live long after him, began before Birmingham became the 12th Man. In 1983 this irreverent former French and Latin student who has "good memories of taking the mickey out of teachers" and carried around in his head "a cartload of one-liners I had for years" fashioned a series of puns into a comedy monologue for an abrasive and affronting stand-up comedian he was then managing.
Australiana by Austen Tayshus spent 13 weeks at number 1 (beaten in almost 50 years of Australian chart history by only two other acts, The Beatles and Abba, who held the summit for 15 weeks each) and sold more than 300, 000 copies, becoming the biggest domestic-selling Australian single of all time.
Although he then (and to a large extent, now) saw himself as a backroom boy, the former record company executive, jingle writer (his 'How Do Ya Feel?' radio campaign for Tooheys won many awards), television commercial producer, commercial creative consultant and jack-of-more-trades-than-we-can-go-into-here approached the microphone himself the following year to record the ingenious It's Just Not Cricket, an EP which stormed straight into number one and sold more than a quarter million units (almost quad-platinum).
"When I set about recording it," he would later recall, "I only had about one page of scribbled notes". Three years later, in 1990, it was back to number 1 with the triple platinum The 12th Man Again album.
The nineties continued to be kind to Birmingham. In February 1992 the musical single Marvellous, by The 12th Man featuring M.C.G Hammer (and also featuring premier league rock heroes Jimmy Barnes, John Farnham, Glen Shorrock and Diesel) was a number one platinum single.
In December of the same year, a third album Still The 12th Man, became the fastest-selling Australian artist recording EMI has ever handled, selling more than 200,000 units in a matter of weeks.
The fourth album Wired World Of Sports 2 did even better. Released in early December 1994, Wired World Of Sports 2 won the ARIA for Highest Selling Album and Best Comedy Album. Rather than (as is usually the case with comedy projects) the joke wearing thin, it has seemed to take on more potency, albeit by moving beyond its initial cricket restraints onto a wider sporting panorama.
On the surface, the 'secret' of The 12th Man recordings appears obvious take a highly visible hero speaking a familiar and serious line and slip in the magic word for the squeaky clean hero to say.
"I really like the impact the swearing has" says Birmingham. "And so do the punters. They all reckon it's exactly what the commentators would say if they weren't on live TV."
But that is merely a component of an extraordinary tapestry of nuances, satire, parody and clever creation. There is also a startling array of Indian and Pakistani names which seem to take on lives on their own.
"I've had a lot of fun with names," explains Birmingham, "Because I've laughed for years at the commentary team's attempts to wrap their tongues around some of the pronunciations."
The entire cricketing and sporting fraternity cop one giant serve from The 12th Man but none with quite the meticulous attention (and, no doubt, affection) as Benaud.
"Richie's wife said I had him down to a tee," Birmingham reveals, "and he's usually pretty cool about all the stuff I've done. He's said in interviews that he thinks I do a very good job, which is great because, at the end of the day Richie is definitely the man from whom the most piss has been extracted. Thankfully Richie realises that all this is just the figment of some idiot's fertile imagination. He often sends me a written critique of my records, his common complaint being that I swear too much."
These days Richie has become, thanks largely to The 12th Man, a huge cult figure. He's probably one of the most imitated people in Australia. "It's incredible" says Birmingham "Everyone has a go at doing Richie these days, men, women, kids, even little furry animals!"
The 12th Man releases are languidly paced, like a good game of cricket, with a new album appearing every three or four years. In fact, they seem to be perfectly calibrated to the point when all Australian sporting fans scratch their heads and mutter "Gee, we haven't heard from the 12th man bloke for a while, have we?"
It is that cue which prompts the release of a new audio adventure constructed in a Bowral (Sir Bradman's boyhood turf) home studio by Birmingham and his indispensable co-producer, composer and sounding board David 'Froggy' Froggatt.
The recording process, Birmingham has revealed, "Takes several weeks of fear and loathing and eating pizzas and staying up to ungodly hours, putting down hundreds of voices and sound effects."
'The Final Dig' was released in 2001. Set during that summer's one day competition featuring Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, The 12th Man asked the million dollar question, who will the Channel 9 Commentary Team Selection Committee choose as the new Commentary Team Captain if and when Richie Benaud retires to his vineyard estate, "Verdaflore", in the South of France. In the running for the guernsey are all the current commentary team of Bill Lawry, Tony Greig, Mark "Tubby" Taylor, Ian Healy and Ian Chappell.
The 12th Man's most current album, Boned! was released in 2006.
