Chalk and Cheese: A Fabrication, by Ross Fitzgerald & Ian McFadyen (Hybrid, August 2025, pp 224, $24.99)

Eamonn O’Hanlon 

After suffering a stroke, veteran conservative commercial radio broadcaster Bill Bradley is admitted to an aged care facility, only to find that one of the residents is none other than his arch political and media rival. This is the left-wing radical socialist broadcaster Ben Curran, whose grandfather was a leading light of the Communist Party of Australia. 

When other residents start asking for their help about unfair government regulations and elder abuse, these two media warriors face a challenge. Can they find a way to work together to defend the rights of elderly residents, and others outside the home?

With the adroit help of their respective grandchildren, Carl and Lily, Bill and Ben devise a surprising solution.

  Chalk and Cheese by Ross Fitzgerald and Ian McFadyen carries the subtitle “a fabrication“—apt and likely legally prudent. If that doesn’t quite resonate, consider alternatives subtitles “A love story,” “A call to arms,” or simply “A reminder.”

For those familiar with Professor Fitzgerald and Mister McFadyen’s sharp and cutting political satires. featuring Dr Professor Grafton Everest, who teaches Life Skills and Hospitality at the University of Mangoland , these potential subtitles might seem overly florid. However, rest assured you’ll feel right at home with the witty dialogue, ingenious and confounding schemes, and super-spy levels of intrigue.

At its core, Chalk and Cheese tells an all-too-common story of the thankless but expected sacrifice of the elderly to appease the young. Bill stoically states, “This was as much about improving his daughter’s quality of life as his own, and it was his duty as a father to act.” This is regarding Bill supposedly benign placement at Elysian Waters (a retirement village) that, if we’re choosing mythological namesakes, bears more in common with the greek Hell,Tartarus.

This theme is masterfully continued throughout the novel as the primary characters, in the guise of the anthropomorphic “Lizards of Oz”, effect change on a major scale. This is while the old inhabitants navigate life as residents with limited ability to choose when they have dinner and take their medicine , let alone influence the nefarious Elysian management. 

Bill and Ben’s non deplume, “Lizards of Oz”, is used to maintain their anonymity, political integrity and remove the possibility of legal challenge.

One of the major themes of Chalk and Cheese is the dangerous nature of preconceptions, evident in almost all primary relationships in the novel. Bill and Ben discover through their work as “The Lizards” that they are, in fact, more similar than different, and that their differences allow them to work extremely well together. Ben’s daughter, Rosa, learns there’s much more to her father than a broken marriage, for which she had blamed him for decades. And Bill learns that there might well have bee n more to his own marriage than he would have liked to know. 

From a more personal point of view, this reader (34) learned that Ross Fitzgerald (80) and Ian McFadyen (77) know more about modern technology and AI than this “young pup.”

This should come as no surprise to those who have been captivated by the long-standing collaboration between Fitzgerald and McFadyen . While not quite “chalk and cheese” themselves, they each bring a distinct pedigree that creates a work greater than the sum of their parts. Ross Fitzgerald is a historian, political commentator, and author, co-author or editor of 46 books. Prof Fitzgerald’s most recent publications are a  memoir Fifty Years Sober: An Alcoholics Journey and a 4-pack The Ascent of Everest, co-authored with Ian McFadyen and both published by Hybrid.  The hugely talented Mister McFadyen is a pre-eminent comedy writer and actor, having significantly impacted the Australian cultural landscape by creating ‘The Comedy Company’, which featured unforgettable TV characters, especially the gum-chewing uber-dumb Kylie Mole and the iconic naturalist, Sir David Rabbitborough – played by McFadyen himself.  

With the publication of Chalk and Cheese both writers can proudly add “elder rights activists” to their long list of achievements, including being political/sexual satirists of the highest order. But to this authors mind Chalk and Cheese is of  more current importance than the Grafton Everest fictions that climaxed with Pandemonium in which Fitzgerald’s anti-hero ended as being the first Australian Secretary-General of the shambolic United Nations. 

The turning point, or “this time it’s personal” moment, in Chalk and Cheese arrives in the form of medical maleficence. Under the suspicion that Ben is one of the two increasingly influential “Lizards” in the podcast, Elysian Waters management decides that the appropriate course of action is his chemical sedation. This is initially thwarted by Sophia, a refugee from Ukraine with a pharmaceutical science background, currently working as a nurse at the home. Once management removes Sophia as an obstacle (or so they think), Bill records his now-friend and co-worker in a drug-induced stupor and rallies the troops to make things right. Not quite planes, trains, and automobiles, but drones, vans, and wheelchairs are gripping in their own right.

It hasn’t escaped my attention that Chalk and Cheese has emerged in the post-Thursday Murder Club world. Richard Osman’s clever and endearing characters (to be portrayed by Pierce Brosnan and Dame Helen Mirren in the screen adaptation) which is set in the fictional Cooper Chase Retirement Village was able to open the eyes of Western youth to the idea that older people in books need not be mere set dressing.

Fitzgerald and McFadyen’s Bill and Ben follow in this tradition in a uniquely Australian, truthful, and often hilarious fashion. The nature of their writing results in fully fleshed characters from multiple age brackets and walks of life. In fact, about the only characters I was unable to feel some level of connection with were the faceless bureaucrats and clipboard carriers whose Cyberdebt and Workfinder schemes might sound familiar to the layperson. But let me remind you, this is “a fabrication” – paperclip recycling and all.

Being somewhat of a sentimentalist,  I most relate to Chalk & Cheese as a love story. This is because it features strong themes of platonic and familial love, navigating declining health and duty to those we care about, plus just a little bit of the more salacious. The book itself starts with a call to arms: “Chalk and Cheese is dedicated to all those elder Australians who are joining forces to improve the quality and circumstances of their lives.” 

It ends with a reminder: “Old age is the happiest time of your life. Make sure you enjoy it. It doesn’t last long.”

Ultimately, Chalk and Cheese is not only a wry satire about Australian politics and culture, but also, and especially. a brutally honest examination of the problems of aging and end-of-life, making it my current top Australian fiction read this year. I for one cannot wait for a Netflix or a film adaptation.

This serious fabrication, which contains brilliantly comedic elements, begins with a quote from one of my favourite American authors, Gore Vidal:
“ Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.”

Might I suggest that, due to the combined interventions of Bill Bradley and Ben Curran, who once hated each other but now powerfully collaborate inn their podcast, this no longer applies to the lives of many old Australians who become agents in their own lives and are no longer pawns. 

Indeed even though it does not actually occur in Chalk and Cheese, it forcibly struck this reader that media work like the Lizards could lead to some sort of much- needed geriatric mobilisation, or even rebellion, in the Land of Oz.

Eamonn O’Hanlon is a Sydney based writer, critic, and standup comedian.

The Sydney Institute Review of Books, September 2025