Norman Gunston is a fictional character role played by Australian actor and comedian Garry McDonald. He is also the host of Norman Gunst on’s tv series on Seven Network.
He rose to fame in the late 1970s, Norman Gunston was the only Gold Logie winning fictional character on Australian television, with McDonald collecting the award in character.
The Gunston character was originally conceived by comedy writer Wendy Skelcher and first appeared as a minor character to appear in a single sketch in the second series of the cult Australian TV comedy series The Aunty Jack Show in 1973.
Garry McDonald portrayed Norman Gunston as a dull and talentless local TV reporter from the industrial city of Wollongong – a locale that was the butt of many jokes throughout the series. The Gunston character made enough of an impression for him to be revived in a subsequent comedy mini-series made by the Aunty Jack team, Wollongong the Brave (1974), in which he starred in a satirical mock-documentary Norman Gunston: The Golden Weeks.
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His segments as Norman in What’s on in Wollongong became one of the most popular parts of the Aunty Jack Show, and Norman appeared on the Aunty Jack Sings Wollongong album along with McDonald’s other character, Kid Eager.
According to McDonald, the Gunston character and his show were initially devised as a parody of an (unintentionally bad) late-night Sydney TV variety show of the early 1970s hosted by expatriate American club entertainer Tommy Leonetti. The series producer and director was John Eastway.