First published in The Sydney Morning Herald on July 28, 1979

James Dibble, the widely known ABC television news-reader, has a new role tomorrow.

He stars in the surreal radio comedy Hot Bananas on AM rock station 2JJ (at 4 pm). Announcer-playwright Russell Guy comments "It's time to go ape."

Guy says he has always admired the "aplomb" of newsreader Dibble who looked to him "like a postcard from outer space."

When he found him "hanging around the ABC corridors" they teamed up to produce their first surreal radio comedy, What's Grafton to You Is Rangoon to Me, 18 months ago.

Rangoon was a "sort of mood movie on radio, about an all-night drive from Brisbane to Sydney, where the driver (James Dibble) starts communicating with his car radio."

Hot Bananas is more of "a search for imagination in a technological jungle, which takes the form of a collage of shattered images, rather than the usual dramatic form."

James Dibble sees it as "a light-hearted tilt at modern life" but, what-ever it is, Hot Bananas is "designed to operate on every sense."  Guy says listeners should keep their eyes closed.

Dibble is the central character with the voice of Erich von Daniken, the late Jimi Hendrix and a mysterious lady called Multi-Colours.

Although Hot Bananas will be available later on cassette, Guy is not completely happy with it.

The high point "is where James Dibble talks to his imagination in the outback," he said.

The announcer/playwright is trying to put on weight. Slight and looking older than his 27 years, he has put four months into Bananas, mostly late at night.

An original score by the Sydney musicians Paul Radcliffe and Andrew Wilson took 80 hours to perfect.

Before his early days in country radio stations in North Queensland, Guy has fond memories of a job with the Brisbane City Council where he recorded the names, occupations and causes of death of all those in the municipal cemetery for an "invaluable sociological document."

Guy was a 2JJ breakfast announcer and in 1976 submitted a play to the playwrights' conference in Canberra. Two other plays have been produced by a Brisbane theatrical group, Play-lab.

But radio, and alternative radio at that, is his forte. Recently, he says, he turned down an offer from 2SM and a salary of $60,000. He prefers the AM medium, because it "hits you where it matters. FM hits you in the head."

His next radio "play" will be called Noise Pollution and "may be unfit to broadcast."

​First published in The Sydney Morning Herald on July 28, 1979