I read this book because it was written by Wendy Harmer and because of the characteristic we have in common: cleft lip and palate.
You know, she’s the only woman with a cleft that I know of in public life. Cleft lip and palate is not that uncommon, affecting 1 in 800 births. If so, where do we all go? I know of a couple of male (but not female) actors, no politicians, no business people, no teachers, no doctors. People with clefts always recognize each other with a quick glance, close attention to the speech, a heartbeat of recognition, but nothing said.
But Wendy Harmer, as one of Australia’s most recognized comedians, is upfront about her cleft, having told her story on television and radio programs many times. In this book, she has the time and space to talk about it without her story being shaped by an interviewer’s questions, and to place it in context among the other varied aspects of her career, now that she, like me, is in her late sixties.
She uses the construct of the mirror as a way of organizing her book, with many chapters starting with a mirror in a different location and the self-talk that accompanies her looking at herself in the mirror. I think that most women in particular (men too?- I can’t speak for them) have a fraught relationship with a mirror: “I’m too fat”; “I have a pimple on the end of my nose”; that close scrutiny of yourself when applying make-up. I think that this ambivalence is probably stronger for people with clefts because you are seeing yourself and your difference from the outside, as others see you. That difference is always a little jolt. I can remember, even as an adult, being fascinated by the three-way mirrors in a triangular dressing room, seeing my asymmetrical profile in a reflection of a reflection, something that I had never seen before. For the child with a cleft, you have sat in a surgeon’s consulting room as your face is scrutinized as a medical problem to be solved; after surgery (once they let you have a mirror!) you stare at the stitches, wishing that somehow they are going to make your life different.
Harmer’s relationship with a mirror was particularly stark when, as a child she complained about teasing, her mother’s response was to say “I want you to go and stand in front of the mirror and when you can find something complain about, you come out here and tell me”. A risky bit of tough-love, I’d say, although Wendy came out saying “I’ve got nothing to be sorry for”. What Wendy only learned decades later was that after she said that, her mother “bawled and bawled my eyes out. Bless your little heart for saying that. I look back and think how harsh that was. I wish I could have been softer.” (p. 378) For in truth, there was something to complain about. Not just the cleft, but also a really difficult childhood, with frequent shifts between schools, an absent mother, a frequently-absent father, a vindictive stepmother and far, far too much responsibility as the eldest daughter.
I hadn’t realized just how varied Harmer’s career has been. She started off as a journalist, first with the Geelong Advertiser in the country, then working for The Sun in Melbourne during the 1970s. The Sun’s features editor sent her off to an ‘alternative comedy’ night at Melbourne University for an article. On stage were Steve Vizard, Paul Grabowsky, Gina Riley, Richard Stubbs and Los Trios Ringbarkus – all of whom ended up being stalwarts of Melbourne comedy/arts scene. She returned to the Sun office, wrote the article and declared that she was going to give up journalist for a crack at comedy.
Here the book becomes much more your standard ‘celebrity autobiography’. I recently saw an interview with comedian Wil Anderson and he spoke about how fundamental Wendy Harmer is to Australian comedy, and even more so women’s comedy, and it’s writ large in this long roll-call of people that she has worked with, both in Australia and overseas. I had only become aware of Harmer through ‘The Big Gig’ and ABC comedy shows from the days when the ABC poured money into locally produced comedy shows instead of a succession of panel discussions and quiz shows. But she has been around for decades, plying her craft in cabaret venues, on TV and in comedy festivals in Australia, Edinburgh and in the US. There’s always a risk that this descends into name-checking and cliché, and the book does suffer from this a bit- there are just so many names! There’s her shift to the bear-pit of Sydney breakfast radio; her many fairly-light novels, her children’s stories; her screen-writing; her ‘Is it just me?’ podcast with Angela Catterns which I mourned when it finished; the Hoopla website between 2011 and 2015. Along with the successes, there are failures as podcasts and websites close, radio breakfast teams churn on to the next iteration of the same formula, and the gig of hosting the Logies devours its next victim. Despite such a varied and full career, there is an element of regret and nostalgia near the end of the book as times change, the media environment becomes crasser and ‘women of a certain age’ become less bankable as media personalities. Her father has died; her relationship with her mother is wary; one sibling has died while another is estranged in the way of families. But Harmer herself is in a good place. As she says,
I search for so many people I loved dearly in the rear-view mirror. But the times I spent with my beloved companions can’t be found in any looking-glass. They are a smell, a touch, sounds and words which cannot be framed and hung on any wall. We see only our own faces when we look into a mirror.
p. 389
And the mirror has no lies to tell her anymore.
My rating: 8/10
Sourced from: Yarra Plenty Regional Library.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 