Greig Pickhaver, an Adelaide refugee, back as H.G. Nelson with Roy on ABC radio in 2020 for Saturday ‘Bludging’
Greig Pickhaver and John Doyle previously presented This Sporting Life (inset) on ABC Radio’s Triple J network for 22 years.
Image courtesy Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)
Greig Pickhaver, actor, comedian, writer and the H.G. Nelson half of the Australian satirical sports comedy duo with Rampaging Roy Slaven (John Doyle) returned to Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio in 2020 for a new Saturday afternoon show Bludging in the blindside.
It takes up from the duo’s ABC Triple J radio comedy This Sporting Life broadcast nationwide for 22 years from 1986, leading to successful radical television spinoffs for the pair.
Born at Nuriootpa, Pickhaver had an uncomfortable family life in Adelaide at Brighton and then Prospect. He attended Oaklands Park Primary school, Brighton High School and for the last two years at Adelaide High.
One of the first graduates of Flinders University’s drama course in the late 1960s, he travelled overseas, including a stint driving trucks in London. On his return in the 1970s, he quickly moved to Melbourne and, after a stint as a roadie for Australian rocker Billy Thorpe, he joined the alterative Australian Performing Group at the Pram Factory.
He moved into radio on 3RRR in Melbourne and developed the H.G. Nelson character while performing in the comedy show Punter To Punter in the early 1980s.
Pickhaver met John Doyle in 1985 while they had minor roles in an SBS TV show and they teamed up as Roy and HG in 1986. This Sporting Life was broadcast initially in Sydney and later nationally on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s triple J youth radio network.
With John Doyle as Rampaging Roy Slaven, Pickhaver’s television shows include The Dream with Roy and HG, This Sporting Life, Blah Blah Blah, Club Buggery, The Channel Nine Show, Planet Norwich, Win Roy and HG’s Money, The Monday Dump, The Nation Dumps, The Ice Dream with Roy and HG, The Cream, The Dream in Athens, The Memphis Trousers Half Hour and Roy and HG’s Russian Revolution.
Pickhaver hosted It’s a knockout (2011-12) alongside former Hi-5 star Charli Robinson and sports presenter Brad McEwan. Pickhaver joined Stephen Quartermain and Alisa Camplin for the Sochi Tonight show during the 2014 winter Olympics. Many of Pickhaver’s television opportunities have been “alternative” sports presentation coverages of the summer and winter Olympics.
Pickhaver starred in the cult Australian comedy film This won’t hurt a bit, opposite Jacqueline McKenzie, and, in 2003, the political comedy, The honourable Wally Norman (with Shaun Micaileff).
