Daryl Paul Somers OAM (né Schulz;[1] 6 August 1951) is an Australian television personality and musician, and a triple Gold Logie award-winner.
Somers lived in the Melbourne suburb of Prahran and was educated at the Christian Brothers College, St. Kilda.
It was either Newbeat Brass[2] or another group, Somerset, which appeared on GTV-9's talent-quest program New Faces, winning their way to the finals only to be beaten by John Williamson.
[4] Somers started professional TV work on 14 July 1971, after being spotted by Ernie Carroll and invited to audition.
[9] Kemsley continued to host the Sydney Cartoon Corner until mid-1973, and other states would have their own similar but unique programs.
Somers and McKenna continued as hosts, but eight weeks later the show introduced the pink glove puppet Ossie Ostrich, operated and voiced by Carroll.
McKenna continued to be billed as cohost until September 1972[11] and the following month, Ossie Ostrich's name began to appear alongside Somers' in TV listings.
The program's production crew also began to play a prominent role in the series, with sound-effects technician Murray Tregonning adding humorous sound bites and effects from a huge bank of recorded eight-track cartridges, and personnel such as long-serving cameraman "Lucky Phil" Lambert making regular appearances.
[16]The series' distinctive brand of irreverent humour soon attracted a sizable adult audience and in 1984 it had become so popular that Nine made the decision to move it to a 9:30 pm Saturday evening timeslot, a later and longer version of the Daryl and Ossie Show from 1978.
The first episode, screened 21 February 1976, featured AC/DC, Ted Mulry Gang, Bill and Boyd, Bryan Davies, Debbie Byrne, Lee Conway, The Executives and video clips of songs by Queen, Max Merritt and the Meteors, and ABBA.
In 1980, Somers replaced Tony Barber on the quiz show Family Feud and hosted the program for three years and 713 episodes.
He had stood in for Graham Kennedy on In Melbourne Tonight in 1975 and briefly hosted other programs when their regular presenters were absent.
[20] John Blackman was a regular, as were the voice artist Paul Jennings and music director Geoff Harvey.
At the end of its second month, Denis Price wrote that Somers failed as a host, 'albeit valiantly, because he is locked into some producer's rigidly inherited set of preconceptions about the essential nature of these late-evening entertainments.
ABC Radio Broken Hill interviewed Corrine Lawrence and Daryl Somers on 22 July 2009[31] in regards to the growing interest.
[33] In October 2015, it was announced that Somers would return to the Nine Network to host an Australian version of the British hypnotism game show, You're Back in the Room in 2016.
[34] The Australian version of You're Back in the Room premiered on 3 April 2016, attracting 1.155 million viewers, despite negative reactions on Twitter.
In Cadd's 2010 autobiography, he said (of Somers) "making that album, he was undoubtedly the hardest working person I'd ever been with in the studio" adding "It was a truly fun project.
[42] In 2018, Australia Post featured his portrait on a series of postage stamps to commemorate that he had “made unique contributions to the Australian entertainment industry and ... played a role in forming our national popular culture”.
[46][47][48][49] The international controversy surrounding the use of blackface in the Jackson Jive sketch on "Red Faces" in 2009 led to the show being derided as "old fashioned, out of touch, stale, [and] misguided".
[51][52] In 2021, Somers stated that he believed that some of the content that aired on the show in the past would not be acceptable today due to “political correctness and the cancel culture”; his remarks faced additional criticism.
[53] In April 2021, Somers wrote a lengthy apology to Kamahl and to those who found the show's content offensive.