Mother and Son is back on our screens – but we’re not talking reruns. The ABC has reimagined that classic Australian family sitcom, this time with Matt Okine as the video-game-playing manchild who moves back home after a breakup and Denise Scott as his widowed mother, Maggie.
For Scott, it’s the latest gig in a decades-long radio, television and standup comedy career. But despite her considerable experience, Scott knows Ruth Cracknell, who played Maggie in the original series, is a tough act to follow.
To quell her nerves about stepping into such a well-known role, she’s taken to gardening – using her favourite pair of secateurs. Here, the comedian tells us about those prized pruners and stories of two other important belongings.
What I’d save from my house if there was a fire
An artwork made by my daughter, Bonnie Lane. She is a visual artist who spent many years living an edgy, no doubt wild existence in Berlin, LA and New York (the details of which I have never asked about, for fear of the answers – I am her mother, after all).
A while ago, she returned home for a visit and her father and I commissioned an artwork. Bonnie disappeared into our back shed and emerged five weeks later with the most magnificent piece, featuring an 18th-century woman calmly seated doing some embroidery while a man’s decapitated head rests on the floor in the corner.
It looks like a painting but is in fact made with thousands and thousands of tiny beads that Bonnie painstakingly glued to the canvas. It’s exquisite and irreplaceable and God knows it cost us a fortune.
My most useful object
My secateurs – bright red handles, big black blades, good quality, no expense spared. As I’ve always said, what’s the point of having cheap, crap secateurs?
I’m mad for a bit of pruning. In fact, in times of high stress – such as when a TV show you’re starring in is about to launch and you’re not Ruth Cracknell – I’ve been known to hack the living bejeezus out of our front garden. The beautiful thing is, the garden always survives and comes back to life, sometimes better than ever. Here’s hoping my career can do the same.
The item I most regret losing
A collection of my journals, handwritten in Spirax notebooks in the 70s, from the time I was 18 until I was 24. They were turbulent times. Relationship disasters, career catastrophes – my life was a big fat mess, and rather than tell anyone, I recorded every detail in these notebooks. I even did a bit of freeform sketching!
I lost them in a fire. A fire I lit. In my parent’s suburban back yard incinerator, because I’d read somewhere that burning them would set me free.
My mother tried to stop me: “Don’t do this Denise. You might want to write a book one day … ”
In hindsight, I realised the sheepish look on my mother’s face indicated she had indeed read them and thought them worth a browse.
As the books went up in smoke, I did not feel free. I felt like an idiot. And, of course, I couldn’t release my feelings by writing about them – I’d just burned all my journals.
Mother and Son airs Wednesday nights at 8.30pm on ABC TV and is available to stream on ABC iView.
