The award-winning, You Can’t Ask That is back for a seventh season with answers to all the questions you’d never ask a stranger.
Each unflinching episode features misunderstood, judged, or marginalised Australians, answering anonymous online questions from the public.
Tonight’s season premiere episode focuses on the world of Bogans
With his beer gut and missing teeth, Benny resembles the quintessential bogan and he’s got the platitudes to match.
“When things go wrong you say, ‘She’ll be right, mate,’” he says.
As tired a cliche as that is, Benny’s life has been anything but. At different times he’s played the church organ at funeral services, demolished houses, worked in an abattoir and as a carer for the disabled. He even has a handle on certain esoteric, eastern belief systems.
“Who wants to see someone struggling? One day I’ll need help and hopefully someone will help me. Bit of karma,” he says.
If there’s one takeaway from tonight’s episode it’s that bogan is not a synonym for simpleton. Simplified or simply put, maybe, but what’s so good about being complicated anyway?
“Why do you sound so unsophisticated? Simple answer because I am fucking unsophisticated,” says Benny.
“I use swearing as joining words. I can’t put together a sentence without swearing,” he says.
At their core these salt of the earth characters subscribe to some of the oldest, truest, most tried and tested values humans have come up with. “Jesus was probably a bogan because he had a mullet, he went fishing all the time and he turned water into wine,” says Marc Ryan.
Or as Bonnie Tonic explains, “(true bogans) will give you the shirt off their back if you needed it.”
If anyone busts the tired old trope of lower-class dummies, it’s bogan Bonnie. With her weekdays spent delivering meals in the outback, and her weekends performing strip shows, she’s as complex and compassionate as anyone you’re likely to meet.
“You have to be a bogan to be able to go 700km west into the middle of the bush and do a strip show in the dirt,” she says.
As loaded as the term bogan has become, it’s not all bad. “Plenty of worse labels to have,” says Benny, “could be a politician,” he says.
The stereotype of dumb, drunk and racist does not apply, say our guests. “They have a kind heart, and an empty wallet,” says Lynne Fry. Lynne is proud of her bogan roots, as evidenced by the mullet she’s been running for the last 50 years.
“No one’s cutting my mullet off. I’ve had it since I was ten and I’m 61, so that’s 51 years I’ve had these luscious locks and I love my mullet,” she says.
Quacker Jack, 45 from Forbes NSW, says contrary to what people might think, Bogans are among the most down to earth, compassionate people we’ve got. “Bogans are real generous. They’re actually real giving people,” he says, though makes one exception. “Except for the David Copperfields who disappear when it’s their shout,” he says.
With a discourse that spans everything from mullets and tracky-dacks to the difference between patriotism and racism, burnouts as a rite of passage, drinking culture, depression, and the unique freedom that comes from being one hundred percent yourself, this episode strikes at the heart of old fashioned Australiana.
Production credit: You Can’t Ask That is an ABC Production. Series Director and Producer: Kirk Docker, Series Producer: Josh Schmidt, Executive Producer: Frances O’Riordan and Head of Entertainment: Nick Hayden. #YouCantAskThat.
