“She’s the one to save me,” errant protagonist Joe declares of Rita, his long-suffering partner and unpaid therapist, in the prison letter that forms the lyrics of Paul Kelly’s 1996 single How to Make Gravy.
The perennial Christmas classic was recently voted the ninth-best Australian song of all time. Almost 30 years after he wrote it, Kelly has released a sequel, Rita Wrote a Letter, in which we finally learn what became of Rita while Joe was in jail: she wised up and moved on.
