Auntie Jack Aunty Jack was one of Australia's unique comic creations - an obese, moustachioed, gravel-voiced transvestite, part trucker and part pantomime dame - who habitually solved any problem by knocking people unconscious or threatening to rip their arms off. Visually, she was unmistakable, dressed in a huge, tent-like blue velvet dress, football socks, workboots, and a golden boxing glove on her right hand. She rode everywhere on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle and referred to everyone as "me little lovelies" whenever she was not uttering her familiar threat: "I'll rip yer bloody arms orf!", a phrase which immediately passed into the vernacular.

The character was devised and played by the multi-talented Grahame Bond and was partly inspired by a mixture of an overbearing uncle who he had disliked as a child, his grandfather Ben Doyle, and Dot Strong, the ABC's last official tea lady. Auntie Jack was the lead character in The Aunty Jack Show, a Logie-award winning Australian television comedy series that ran for just two years - from 1972 to 1973. Produced by and broadcast on ABC-TV, the series attained an instant cult status that persists to the present day. During his time as a student of architecture at Sydney University, Graham Bond was a founding member and leading light of the University's legendary Architecture Revues from 1964-69.  It was here that he met and became friends with other Sydney students including Geoffrey Atherden, Maurice Murphy and Peter Weir (who became Australia's most internationally acclaimed film director). Bond was already an accomplished writer, producer, comedian, singer, songwriter and guitarist by the time he graduated. Grahame also met his long-time musical, writing and acting partner Rory O'Donoghue, at the University. After graduating, Grahame and friends continued working together on a wide range of projects in film, TV, radio and theatre. Aunty Jack's first media appearance should have been in 1969, in an ABC children's radio series, also called The Aunty Jack Show. It was intended to replace the long-running children's radio series The Argonauts, which was scheduled for cancellation.

Aunty Jack (Grahame Bond), Kid Eager (Garry (McDonald), Thin Arthur (Rory O'Donoghue) and Flange Desire (Sandra McGregor) in 1972

The new series never went to air because ABC executives felt that that the Aunty Jack character and some of Grahame's songs were "inappropriate" for young listeners. The Aunty Jack character made her television debut in Aunty Jack's Travelling Show, an episode of ABC-TV's The Comedy Game, broadcast in December 1970. This program marked what was the start of a fruitful partnership between Bond, O'Donoghue and ABC writer, producer and producer/director Maurice Murphy. They became the creative nucleus for a string of programs that redefined TV comedy in Australia. After the first episode was aired, the ABC switchboard received more than 1,000 calls of complaint, particularly about the drag aspect of the Aunty Jack character. Some viewers found it too confronting. It was also poorly received by critics.  Although frequently compared to Monty Python's Flying Circus, the Aunty Jack character in fact made her appearance well before Python was screened in Australia, although the two teams evidently shared the same love of surreal humour.

The Goons have also been mentioned as an inspiration, but  Bond himself has said that he had listened to The Goons only occasionally. Up-and-coming director Peter Weir was involved behind the scenes in the early days of the series. He had been part of the university revues they had done together in the 1960s, but admits giving up performing just before The Aunty Jack Show. He later recounted that, after seeing Monty Python for the first time, he felt that there was no way he could perform as well as the Python team and so he retreated behind the camera. Maurice Murphy was a pivotal figure in this fertile era of Australian television comedy, overseeing Aunty Jack and its various spin-off series. Ted Robinson, then a young director, got his break working for Murphy on the second series of Aunty Jack. Robinson later took over Murphy's mantle in the 1980s, producing some of the best comedy series of the period, including The Big Gig and The Gillies Report. Aunty Jack alternated one-off sketches with segments featuring many regular and semi-regular characters. All episodes featured segments with Aunty Jack and her sidekicks - blonde bombshell Flange Desire (Sandra McGregor), the tremulous Thin Arthur (Roty O'Donoghue) and the snobbish Narrator Neville (John Derum).

There were also semi-regular appearances by nervous folk-singing duo Errol and Neil (Grahame & Rory), the obnoxious Kid Eager (Garry McDonald), a parodic amalgam of characters like Dennis the Menace and Ginger Meggs, the extrovert rock'n'roll butcher Kev Kavanagh (Grahame), a character that Bond had already performed (as "Mr Kevin") in Peter Weir's Homesdale. Derum left the show after Series 1, wishing to pursue other interests. He was replaced by a new cast member, Garry McDonald, a talented young actor, comedian and musician, who had recently graduated from NIDA. His main role was as Aunty Jack's new sidekick, the cheeky, gum-chewing, freckle-faced Kid Eager, but in one episode McDonald premiered a new character, devised by one of the staff writers. This character featured only briefly in Aunty Jack, but became much more prominent in the spin-off series Wollongong The Brave and went on to become one of the most popular comedy characters in the history of Australian television - the now-legendary Wollongong media non-personality and 'little Aussie bleeder', Norman Gunston. The popularity of the series led to a one-off TV special, Aunty Jack Rox On, a concert tour, a No.1 hit single, "Farewell Aunty Jack" (based on the theme song of the series) and a best-selling album Aunty Jack Sings Wollongong, released in early 1974. "Farewell Aunty Jack" was released as a single in December 1973, reached No.1 on the Australian charts a week later, where it stayed for 22 weeks. It was the first single to debut in Australia at No.1, the first Australian single to debut at No.1 and also the first Australian single in picture-disc format, reputedly being the first disc of its kind in the world.