Classic TV Flashback: Russell Coight’s All Aussie Adventures…
Time to hit the road! This is his backyard, the Aussie outback and who better to show it off to the world than Russell Coight in his television series Russell Coight’s All Aussie Adventures. Russell prides himself on his knowledge and skill with dealing with situations in outback Australia, but in reality he is accident prone with the chances of something going wrong very high.
But of course Russell Coight isn’t real and he is played by the very talented Glenn Robbins with the assistance of writers Tom Gleisner and Santo Cilauro.
Russell Coight himself is one of the most comfortable people in front of a camera, you could say that he loves the camera a tad too much and has on many occasions appeared bare arsed not on his own accord. We get an insight into Coight’s personal life where he reveals unintentionally that he is no longer together with his wife and that he is completely over her, but as we see in the outtakes he is desperate to hear from her. He also reveals in an interview with Bert Newton on Good Morning Australia that his wife left him shortly after a whip cracking incident cracking at the wrong time near his genitals, which resulted in him as Bert put it “unable to crack it anymore”.
One of the great recurring gags in the series is the close-up of the handshake, when ever Russell would shake the hand of a black aboriginal the stock footage used would be of two white hands shaking, and when Russell shakes the hand of a white man the footage will show one white and one black hand shaking.
Recurring accidents Coight is best known for are falling off his camp chair, setting his ten on fire with one occasion he can be heard saying “oh no the ten’s on fire again”, setting his vehicle on fire, getting caught in self made animal traps and he always manages to find a way of having himself exposed.
Coight is also known for his outback bush demonstrations, which as you can imagine never really go to plan. One of them is when he is trying to demonstrate how to make water in the bush with green leaves a hole and a sheet of plastic, but he forgot to add the Billy inside the hole meaning he ruined the whole demonstration.
Another demonstration gone wrong is when he created a trap to catch a fox, he made a trip wire in the path of where the animal would walk, but late at night he wondered off upset and got caught into the trap. He even used dynamite, which of course went horribly wrong.
Another recurring gag in the series is that a person will be stranded on the side of the road with a problem usually with there car, and of course Coight offers a helping hand and always has the right tools for the job. However the person’s car always usually ends up for the worse with either a tree falling on it, falling down an embankment or tearing off a bulbar.
Russell Coight’s All Aussie Adventures aired for two seasons and also there was a TV movie titled Russell Coight’s Celebrity Challenge which took a group of celebrities into the outback where they were challenged to survive with Russell Coight by their side.
Even though the format was predictable and you knew what was coming around the corner each and every week you still couldn’t help yourself but laugh at the antics of Coight with his over egotistical self and was a big favourite when it was on screens. Russell also made appearances at the Logies, Good Morning Australia, The Panel and also Rove during his television career.
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