The Show of the Year 2016

Casey Bennetto is an award-winning writer, musician and radio broadcaster. He wrote the musical KEATING!, hosts the program Superfluity on Melbourne’s 3RRR, and has appeared in places as diverse as ABCTV’s Spicks and Specks, the Melbourne International Arts Festival and the Festival of Dangerous Ideas at Sydney Opera House.

Born in 1969, Bennetto spent his formative years amongst the fragrant meadows and blossoming malls of Greensborough, Melbourne.

He made his way to university, procured a BA and worked variously as a proofreader, a copywriter, an IT specialist and as the lead singer in the band Skin, which garnered national commercial airplay for their 1994 EP, Waking Up With You.

As part of the ‘Drowsy Drivers’ project, in 2004 Casey wrote a musical theatre biography of former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, KEATING!.

In late 2008, Casey premiered a new project as part of the Melbourne International Arts Festival: A Largely Fanciful History Of The Spiegeltent, in which he also starred; he also wrote and performed in 2009's Evening and provided the songs for the ever-threatening Christmas pantomime The Terminativity in 2010–11. He served as dramaturge on Eddie’s Shane Warne: The Musical as well as making contributions to Company B’s The Adventures Of Snugglepot And Cuddlepie and Die Roten Punkte’s Super Musikant and Kunst Rock.

He scored both series of Amanda Brotchie and Adam Zwar's Lowdown and was nominated for an AACTA with Shellie Morris and Tim Cole for work on the 2014 musical documentary Prison Songs. He appeared with Alan Brough as underappreciated alternative rock icons The Narelles in 2015, and has hosted A Swingin' Bella Christmas for the past five years. He has hosted The Show Of The Year for the Wheeler Centre since the show's inception in 2013.

Most recently, he scored the ABC TV series Get Krack!n and is currently working on several things at once, obviously to the detriment of all of them.

Casey has also hosted a regular show on 3CR, worked extensively for PBS FM and made many appearances on 774 ABC Melbourne as host, co-host and guest.

His appearances on ABC TV’s Spicks And Specks resurface occasionally to shame him.

Deborah Conway is a singer/songwriter who shot to fame as the lead singer of Do Re Mi.

She is a significant and eloquent contributor to Australian music, singing songs that chronicle the essential elements of life, love, loss, memory, the mundane and the spiritual for the past 30 years. As lead singer for Do Re Mi her voice was first heard by many on the single 'Man Overboard'.

She’s gone on to sing on The Iron Man by Pete Townsend, alongside Nina Simone and John Lee Hooker, and acting and singing in Peter Greenaway’s film Prospero’s Books. In 1991 she released her debut solo album, String of Pearls, which won her the Best Female ARIA award that year. She has continued to write and record. In May 2010, Conway and partner Willy Zygier launched their ninth studio album, Half Man Half Woman, recorded in Melbourne with producer James Black. Conway and Zygier have just released a new album, Everybody’s Begging, and have been touring the album to sold-out concert halls along the east coast.

Osamah Sami is a failed cricketer and a struggling Muslim. As a writer, he has completed two feature films (Ali’s Wedding – a Muslim romantic comedy based on his book Good Muslim Boy, and Be Less Beautiful, filming in 2016). He has also written a vague number of plays; co‐created a developed eight episode sitcom Baghdad to the Burbs; co‐created the web series 2 Refugees & a Blonde and keeps an unpopular blog, Halal Aussie Daily.

On stage he has performed for Belvoir St Theatre, Big West, La Mamma, Melbourne Theatre Company, Theatre@Risk and over two dozen other independent shows. Osamah also played the title role in Saddam the Musical, which got him deported from the US – having been mistaken for a terrorist. In fairness, he does barrack for the Essendon Bombers.

Born in war-torn Iran to Iraqi parents – and escaping to call Australia home – have moulded him into a confused soul.

His choice to forge a career as an artist (actor–writer–comedian) has caused his loved ones terrible anxiety. His mother would love nothing more than for him to get real employment at the local IGA (if it was good enough for Anh Do, it’s good enough for her son).

On screen, he played lead roles in films Saved (dir: Tony Ayres) opposite Claudia Karvan, and in Dee McLachlan’s award winning 10 Terrorists! Contrary to popular belief, he has played a terrorist only twice.

Osamah is listed as a ‘notable Australian Muslim’ by the Commonwealth of Australia. He is currently investigating how this could have occurred. He is also working on being a better father to his two beautiful daughters. 

With an unselfconscious charm and a superb skill for finding the funny in true stories Geraldine Hickey has been described as a ‘deceptively cheery dame who'll quietly take out your innards.’ She is revered in the industry as a comedian’s comedian and has been shortlisted for the ‘Piece of Wood’ award at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival multiple times. A veteran of many seasons of The Melbourne International Comedy Festival, she is also a regular on the club and pub circuit around the country.

In 2011 she teamed up with Kate McLennan and Anne Edmonds to host the weekly AFL themed podcast ‘The Downlow’. Melbourne Community station Triple R loved it so much they gave the girls their own sports themed show on Sunday afternoons, it soon became one of the stations most popular shows and resulted in Geraldine becoming a co-host on Breakfasters which is where you can now hear her every morning.

Cal Wilson came across the Tasman in 2003 and has gone on to become one of our most popular comedians, a perennial favourite on television shows such as Have You Been Paying Attention?, Spicks and Specks, Good News Week and Thank God You’re Here. Her stand up shows are as engaging as they are hilarious, often bringing the audience’s stories to life alongside her own.

Cal earned herself a seat in one of Australia’s most sought after writers rooms at the ABC for The Weekly with Charlie Pickering where she returned for its first two seasons until she landed one of her dream jobs as an ensemble cast member in Whose Line Is It Anyway? Australia alongside some of the country’s brightest improvisers.

In 2017, Cal returned to the stage with Things I’ve Never Said which drew sold out crowds to comedy festivals around Australia, appeared on the prestigious Melbourne International Comedy Festival Oxfam Gala and returned as live host for smash hit story telling show The Moth and their regular monthly shows.

Cal’s brand new live show Hindsight will be touring Australia in 2018.

Willy Zygier is a musician, producer and composer.

Willy’s first recorded appearance was with his band Tootieville on the Cooking With George Mark Too compilation record, released by Triple J in 1985. He first appears in the Deborah Conway story (officially) on the credits of the 1991 'Release Me' single. He co-wrote and co-produced Conway's 1993 album, Bitch Epic, in 1993. Since then, he has collaborated on all Conway's solo records and subsequent records released under both their names.

Willy has produced and arranged music for a number of Australian feature films and documentaries – The Nugget, Horseplay, Ned & Paringa; and for television has composed scores for the ABC’s Eagle & Evans, Sounds of Australia & Stuff; SBS’s Global Village,Thalassa, Everybody Loves A Wedding & Decadence and Channel 9’s telemovie Little Oberon. 

Conway and Zygier have just released a new album, Everybody’s Begging, and have been touring the album to sold-out concert halls along the east coast.

Benson Saulo is a descendent of the Wemba Wemba and Gundjitmara Aboriginal nations of western Victoria and the New Ireland Provence of Papua New Guinea.

Saulo has served as the Australian Youth Representative to the United Nations (2011), and in 2012 became the Founding Director of the National Indigenous Youth Leadership Academy (NIYLA). In 2014, Saulo co-founded Mind Garden Projects, a not-for-profit that supports two schools in New Ireland Provence, Papua New Guinea.

More recently, Saulo was involved as a Senior Consultant with Price Waterhouse Coopers’ Indigenous Consulting (PIC). Saulo has received numerous awards, including the National NAIDOC Youth of the Year Award and the Ricci Marks Award, and has been featured in Cleo magazine's '30 under 30' list.

Singer-songwriter Geraldine Quinn (Spicks and Specks, The Weekly With Charlie Pickering, Adam Hills Tonight) is an award-winning rock-cabaret writer-performer who tours Australia, New Zealand and the UK. 

She has been nominated for 14 Green Room Awards (winning three), two Golden Gibbo Awards for Best Independent Local Production in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (winning in 2011), Best Cabaret in Adelaide Fringe (nominee - 2013), Best Cabaret in NZ Fringe (winner - 2015) and is a two-time Moosehead Award recipient (2011 and 2014). She is healthily enamoured of the work of David Bowie and not at all obsessed.

Shireen Morris is a lawyer, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Melbourne Law School, and a senior adviser on constitutional reform to Cape York Institute. She is the author of Radical Heart (MUP, 2018), the co-editor of The Forgotten People: Liberal and Conservative Approaches to Recognising Indigenous Peoples with Damien Freeman (MUP, 2016) and the editor of A Rightful Place: A Roadmap to Recognition (Black Inc, 2017). Shireen is a regular commentator on TV, radio and print media.

Nkechi Anele is a Nigerian-Irish Australian who grew up in Naarm (Melbourne) and spent over a decade in the Australian music industry as the lead singer in Saskwatch. In 2015, along with her best friend Lucie Cutting, she started ...

Jennifer Byrne is a senior journalist and broadcaster who has worked in all arms of the media: print, radio and television.

Having done her cadetship at the Age and worked on UK’s Fleet Street, she was a founding reporter with Channel Nine’s Sunday programme and spent some 12 years traveling the world for 60 Minutes and as anchor for Foreign Correspondent. She was publishing director of Reed Books, morning presenter on ABC radio, won national awards as interviewer and columnist for the Bulletin and, in May 2006, returned to TV to create the country’s first televised Book Club, which ran on the ABC for 11 years until December 2019.

Alongside books, Jennifer’s favourite pastime – far too serious to be called a hobby – has since the age of two been the playing of games. Including quizzes, cards, board games, and crosswords (physical and electronic). To be invited to become the first Australian host of Mastermind – a show she grew up watching, of course – is the realisation of a dream she didn’t know she had. Jennifer hosted series two of Mastermind plus Celebrity Mastermind in 2020.

Tom Ballard is a comedian, writer, broadcaster, actor, philanthropist and philanderer.

In 2009 he became the youngest person ever to win the Melbourne International Comedy Festival's Best Newcomer Award. Since then he's co-hosted the Triple J breakfast show for four years, won an ARIA, supported the likes of Wil Anderson, Stephen Merchant and Danny Bhoy, roasted Jimmy Carr and even filled in for Tony Jones on ABC TV's Q&A . 

While all that's very impressive, you should also know that Tom has quite bad eczema, is scared of going to the gym and can not cook anything at all.  

A touring headline comedian for over a decade, Danny has performed on four continents – and gigged for royalty, Prime Ministers and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

He's been on the television numerous times: Utopia, The Project, The Footy Show, Rove [Live], The Circle, Santo Sam & Ed’s Total Football, The Mansion, City Homicide, Stand Up Australia … and he had one line in Steven Spielberg’s The Pacific. He made his Hollywood debut in the Nicolas Cage thriller, Knowing. He appears in the pivotal opening scene – meaning if you list the cast in order of appearance, he almost has top billing.

Despite all of these achievements, he is best known for writing funny things for footballers to run through. He’s okay with this. Go Dogs.

Tim Flannery is a scientist, an explorer, a conservationist and a leading writer on climate change. He has held various academic positions including visiting Professor in Evolutionary and Organismic Biology at Harvard University, Director of the South Australian Museum, Principal Research Scientist at the Australian Museum, Professorial Fellow at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne, and Panasonic Professor of Environmental Sustainability, Macquarie University. His books include the award-winning international bestseller The Weather Makers, Here on Earth and Atmosphere of Hope. Flannery was the 2007 Australian of the Year. He is currently chief councillor of the Climate Council.