THE NAKED CITY – with Miss Death, Jay Katz and Coffin Ed

A  BELLYFUL OF UNDERBELLY!

Channel Nine is trumpeting it as the greatest Australian TV show of all time. We’ll let you be the judge of that but Underbelly The Golden Mile is set to present yet another comic book look at Sydney’s gangster Disneyland, complete with enough gratuitous nudity to have even the good folk at Porky’s blushing.

Serious students of true crime might dismiss the latest franchise as just another circus of over the top caricatures and mucho tits and bums but there’s no doubting our appetite for this kind of meaty underworld soap. And when it comes to promoting our own third rate version of the Sopranos, Channel 9 is a past master at endless cross promotion. Who knows whether John Ibrahim has already signed an exclusive tell all interview with A Current Affair but expect the cast of the current Underbelly to crop up everywhere from the cooking segment on Kerri Anne to Chook Lotto on the reborn Hey Hey It’s Saturday. When the original Melbourne based Underbelly went to air, Carl Williams’ shamelessly self promoting ex missus Roberta became an instant tabloid personality with both Seven and Nine competing for her manic observations. The lines between fact and fiction soon became indelibly blurred as Roberta signed a management  deal with Kyle Sandilands and hosted her own Gangland Goes Gangbusters tour of Melbourne’s gruesome murder scenes. Already former disgraced detective Roger Rogerson has organized a similar bus tour of the back streets of Kings Cross at the prompting of 2MMM and surely the floodgates are about to burst when it comes to the laundering of even more dollars out of the Golden Mile, albeit the highly fictitious version. Rumour has it the old Kings Cross Wax Works might soon be resurrected with the opportunity for punters to have their happy snaps taken with life like effigies of George Freeman and Christopher Flannery. Why not a weekly “underbelly flop” into the El Alamein fountain where drunken revellers could compete for cash prizes as to who makes the biggest splash. It works for Movie World on the Gold Coast, so can we suggest a nightly wild west style shoot out in a designated Kings Cross location. All stunt men and blanks of course and at least $50 admission at the foor but the cameo appearance of a current Underbelly cast member would not go unnoticed, especially by Nine’s publicity department. And finally an invitation to join Jay Katz, Miss Death and Coffin Ed at the Darlo Bar in Darlinghurst every Wednesday night, for Sydney’s only Hey Hey It’s Saturday free zone as we play Texas Chainsaw Trivia from 7.30pm. We might even rustle up a couple of old time celebrities from the criminal milieu to keep the party pumping!