Ross Fitzgerald and Ian McFadyen, Chalk and Cheese: A Fabrication ( Hybrid: Melbourne, August 2024, $24.99)

It isn’t always in the headlines but in Australia our treatment of the elderly needs our urgent attention. Occasionally politicians and others cast an eye in the direction of this subject but it warrants so much more.
So after collaborating on a suite of political satires my co-author Ian McFadyen and I  decided to change tack to address an issue that could well be the next big inconvenient truth – the disgrace of our treatment of the elderly.

 The recently published Chalk and Cheese: A Fabrication ( Hybrid Publishing: Melbourne, October 2024, $24.99 ) is a a novel that deals with this subject. We have kept the humour of our previous collaborations in this, the fifth fiction that I have worked on with Ian whom many will remember from his brilliant days of ‘Comedy Company’ fame. 
To me, it is the most important publication in which I have been involved. 

Although Chalk and Cheese contains strong comedic elements, there are extremely serious issues at the heart of our novel. In particular this applies to important issues about ageing, retirement, aged care bureaucracy, elder financial and medical abuse, and other end-of-life matters about which Ian and I have strong views and deep and increasing concerns. 
Ian is 77, and I turned 80 on Christmas Day. He is happily married, but I have lived alone since the death, five years ago, of my darling wife and friend of 45 years, Lyndal Moor. Both of our mothers had awful experiences of being overmedicated and otherwise badly treated in their respective nursing homes. Hence the genesis of our current fabrication, and our awareness of the urgent need for change in the treatment of the elderly in Australia.

Chalk and Cheese features two 80-year-old, politically influential, former radio stars, Bill Bradley and Ben Curran, who hate each other, and end up in the same nursing home. When other residents start asking for their help regarding unfair government regulations and elder abuse, these two opposing media warriors find a way to work together to defend the rights of elderly residents in their nursing home, and of other old Australians in the wider community.

With the help of their tech-savvy grandchildren, Carl and Lily, they produce a politically powerful podcast, The Lizards of Oz, initially to help other inmates in the Elysian Waters nursing home and then to assist the elderly who are facing critical problems throughout Australia.

Our creative collaboration highlights the powerful role and potential legislative impact of talkback radio and podcasts in the serious business of mobilising media opinion and political activity in support of, and by, the elderly in Australia.

This is why Chalk and Cheese is dedicated “to all those elderly Australians who are joining forces to improve the quality and circumstances of their lives.”

 A postmodernist academic at Sydney University, who to put it mildly isn’t among my greatest fans, recently told a retired colleague that the names, Bill Bradley and Ben Curran were clearly derived from Bill and Ben, the Flower Pot Men, a BBC children’s show which we saw here on the ABC in the 1950s and 60s. 
For those who don’t know, Bill and Ben were terracotta puppets who lived at the bottom of an English country garden. This claim about the book’s characters Bill and Ben is utterly false
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Since Chalk and Cheese: A Fabrication was published in early August, a number of readers have contacted me claiming to know on whom Bill Bradley and Ben Curran were based.

Their not so educated guesses for Bill the right-wing populist range from Alan Jones, Chris Smith and Andrew Bolt, to Ray Hadley – whose surname happens to rhyme with Bill Bradley! 

As the prototype for Ben Curran the radical socialist, Phillip Adams, David Marr and Robert Manne head the list, plus one vote for John Pilger who died in December 2023 of pulmonary fibrosis.

It may seem a shame to disappoint them, but in fact Bill and Ben are characters of sheer imagination. 

As befits a book about nursing homes and end-of-life issues, we begin with this pertinent quote from the great American author, Gore Vidal: “Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act. ”

But on a more positive note we end with an uplift: “Old age can be the happiest time of your life. Make sure you enjoy it. It doesn’t last long.”

Even though Chalk and Cheese is a work of fiction, we hope it will spur on politicians in all our parliaments to enact legislation protecting the elderly from systemic failures in aged care which are increasingly bedevilling the nation. We also hope that our insights will lead adult children of nursing home residents and those contemplating aged care to join the cause for much needed change in the treatment of an increasingly aged population.

Ross Fitzgerald AM is Emeritus Professor of History and Politics at Griffith University. His most recent books, all published by Hybrid, include a memoir, Fifty Years Sober: An Alcoholic’s Journey; and the political satire Pandemonium co-authored with Ian McFadyen in which the shambolic Dr Professor Grafton Everest becomes the first Australian Secretary-General of the United Nations.