King: the life and comedy of Graham Kennedy. Graeme Blundell. 2003.

Graham Kennedy, Australia’s King of Comedy, reigned over local television for 40 years as talk-show host, game-show presenter, satirist, commentator and iconoclastic jester. He developed the comedian’s skill for perfect timing when he shared the microphone with Nicky Whitta on Melbourne’s favourite radio program, Nicky and Graham, on 3UZ in the 1950s. He then went on to become the shining light of Australian television., hosting and clowning his way through years of In Melbourne Tonight, Blankety Blanks and Coast to Coast. Looking for a new challenge, Graham Kennedy moved into films and starred in Don’s Party and The Club.

Blundell elegantly traces the career of the star from working-class Melbourne, who tilted Australia’s television to an alarming, unforgettable angle with his style of disrespectful buffoonery, then disappeared into the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. King is also the story of the comedy that Kennedy borrowed from - vaudeville, burlesque, stand-up humour, satire and revue - and looks at the way he drew on humour’s traditions and invented new comic genres for television.