IT was a side-splitting five minutes when NEWS reporters Lia Spencer and Bridget Cook met with comedy duo Hamish Blake and Andy Lee at Westfield Fountain Gate last week. The famous pair had the reporters in hysterics with their high-energy charisma and quick-wit. Comedic antics aside, the boys were very genuine and down-to-earth, making it easy to see why hundreds of fans, some as far as Brisbane, travelled to Narre Warren for a brief opportunity to meet them.
Hamish and Andy haven’t even sat down yet when we are ushered into an interview room at Centre Management.
Hamish is on the phone speaking to someone about signage for FOX FM, and Andy greets us with a smile. Hamish hangs up the phone and they both walk over and shake our hands and introduce themselves
“Hi, I’m Hamish.” “I’m Andy” (Um, let’s be honest, no introduction is necessary).
Andy takes a seat at the head of the table, smells the mints which are in a bowl and asks how old we think the mints are.
The duo said they had been to the City of Casey several times, with Hamish claiming to have installed sprinklers outside a gate at a house in “Strawberry fields, Berwick.”
“Haven’t heard of it?” Hamish laughed.
“The Beatles wrote a very famous song about it!”
At this point, he asks us if we would like any strawberries or fruit, which we politiely declined.
Hamish also said his grandmother was a fan of the pokies and his family had links to the “Cranbourne Trots.”
He even contemplated ditching the fanfare at Westfield Fountain Gate to make a visit to the Cranbourne Racecourse.
Andy said he was very familiar with Berwick, having once dated a girl who had family in the area.
The pair are revisiting the area to promote their DVD ‘Hamish & Andy’s Caravan of Courage: Australia v NZ’ which they had a great time filiming. They said one of the highlights was the adrenaline-pumping task of driving a hovercraft.
“It was a terrifying experience,” Andy said.
“And we rate things on boring, then exciting, then terrifying, then death,” Hamish added.
The two are about to jet set to Asia for another filming of Caravan of Courage. Hamish said his wife, author Zoe Foster Blake, will make a few trips to Asia to keep the boys company, and Hamish suggests he will be styling her hair in braids as part of the experience- something a former beauty editor might not agree to?
Before the boys took the stage to greet the hundreds of waiting fans, they shared a few secrets with us as part of the Take 10 for the News’ sister paper the Pakenham Gazette.
Hamish admitted to wanting to be professional golfer Adam Scott for a day, so he could make fun of Andy’s golf skills, and that his first concert was Carols by Candlelight (although he would have preferred it to be Aerosmith, to sound a bit “cooler”) Andy couldn’t remember his first concert, but Hamish suggested it was because Andy was a wild child in his younger days.
“He can’t remember, but he woke up with a face full of sick and a Dolly Parton shirt on,” he laughed.
For more hilarious answers from Take 10- make sure to pick up your copy of yesterday’s (Wednesday)’s Pakenham Gazette.
