June 29, 2026 — 5:00amYou have to wonder just what a show that aired for three decades has to do to make the voting list for the favourite Australian TV programs of all time. It is certainly what Daryl Somers has been ruminating since TV Week issued a list of 140 shows, and asked the public to cast their vote as a way to determine the 70 favourite Aussie TV offerings of the past 70 years.In a glaring omission, Hey Hey It’s Saturday, which aired for 30 years, was not included in the list. Somers, Hey Hey’s host and executive producer, was, quite rightly, astonished and unimpressed.Daryl Somers and his long-time Hey Hey It’s Saturday co-star, Ossie Ostrich.“Although I’m disappointed that Hey Hey did not make the list, I’ve always had a very strong connection to our vast and loyal audience, and at the end of the day, that’s all that matters,” Somers told CBD.While there was the option for people to add any show not on the list as their vote, it seems strange that Hey, Hey was not included on the original compilation.Whether it was a regrettable oversight or a deliberate snub is unclear. Voting closed on June 21.Certainly, there are parts of Hey Hey that have not aged well, but the show stood the test of time and collected 29 Logie Awards – gongs handed out by TV Week – including three Gold Logies for Somers.The Hey Hey Facebook page has more than 800,000 followers.TV commentator Colin Vickery sided with Somers: “Given Hey Hey’s longevity and popularity across the decades, it definitely deserved to be included on that long list.”TV Week editorial director Amber Giles poured a bit of petrol on the bin fire when CBD tried to get to the bottom of the Hey Hey drama.Somers with Kylie Minogue and Ossie Ostrich on Hey Hey It’s Saturday in 2010.“The shortlist was designed to spark conversation, not define it,” Giles said in a statement.“Australians were encouraged to vote for any show that shaped their TV experience, regardless if it was on the 140-show shortlist or not. We love to see the passion this poll has brought.”The top 20 shows in the poll will be revealed on August 16, the night of the Logies.It will be interesting to see if against the odds, Hey Hey can make it into the final 70, and if so, where it lands. Watch this space.Andrew Bolt escapes brush with the Racial Discrimination ActIn 2014, Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt bemoaned being branded “racist, racist, racist” after the Federal Court three years earlier found that he’d breached section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.But the landmark decision doesn’t seem to have done much to deter him. Now more than a decade later, Bolt, also a YouTuber and presenter of his low-budget Sky News talk show, has narrowly avoided another brush with the legislation.Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt in action on Sky News.Sky NewsThe latest complaint alleges Bolt’s commentary calling Indigenous knowledge “primitive” amounted to racial discrimination, and called for apologies and compensation for the alleged contraventions of section 18C. The applicants said the commentary had “caused offence, insult, humiliation and intimidation”.The suit was launched in the Federal Court in mid-May by musician Adrian Burragubba, a Wangan and Jagalingou man, and Gomeroi people Cameron Manning and Gwenda Stanley, who were represented by the Racial Justice Centre. But after this masthead obtained documents from the court and inquired about the case, it was ultimately discontinued. Racial Justice Centre executive director Sarah Ibrahim wouldn’t be drawn on why.At issue for the applicants was a television segment aired on Sky News back in November 2023, along with two opinion pieces Bolt wrote for the Herald Sun later that year.On air, Bolt commented on the Tiwi Islands elders’ legal effort to block Santos’ $5.7 billion gas pipeline running through their traditional sea country. He said: “The Tiwi Islanders, who are fighting this – not all of them are, but these guys really depend on government handouts, so since three-quarters of them do not work according to the latest census, they’re either out of the workforce or unemployed, so why, how can they actually say no to the kind of money that goes to the social services they rely on.”In the first Herald Sun article, published on December 13, Bolt called Energy Minister Chris Bowen anti-science and racist after Bowen said at a COP28 conference Indigenous people across the world were at the heart of climate change and had cared for lands for millennia.“Bowen wouldn’t have dreamt that the ‘Indigenous peoples’ he claims have cared for lands ‘for millennia’ included the white tribes of Europe, let alone the Japanese or Han Chinese. And why not? Because those people left their ‘Indigenous knowledge’ behind as they used reason and science to work out better ways to live without dying early and poor,” Bolt wrote.“We’re supposed to show ‘profound respect’ for the ‘Indigenous knowledge’ of Aboriginal people, some of whom are now in the Federal Court trying to stop a $5.6 billion offshore gas project by claiming an undersea pipeline will upset a man-turned crocodile they claim has lived in that patch of ocean since the Dreamtime.“Don’t Bowen and the prime minister himself realise many Australians are sick of this kowtowing to the primitive?”Bolt then moved to clarify what he meant by “primitive” in a second column published on December 17, where he also responded to Bowen calling his initial opinion piece “racist”.“If he’s smart, he’d know I was not calling Aboriginals ‘primitive’. Indeed, I have Aboriginal friends – Jacinta, Warren, Anthony, Adam – far more sophisticated than Bowen. ‘Primitive’ is what I called a Stone Age belief in an anti-gas Crocodile Man,” Bolt went on.When asked about the action last week, a News Corp Australia spokesman said the company would “vigorously defend” the matter. Once it’d been discontinued, days later, the spokesman said the company always had “full confidence” Bolt would be “exonerated”.Not that we had any reason to doubt them. It was only in December that Bolt was seen hoofing it up the street en route to Lachlan Murdoch’s annual Christmas party. The year before, Bolt was part of Rupert Murdoch’s personal entourage during The Sun King’s first visit to Australia in six years.Fox spotting amid Icelandic works in MelbourneFox spotting has become a bit of a sport in town after the billionaire Fox family’s high-stakes succession drama erupted in public earlier this month when patriarch Lindsay Fox confirmed his eldest son, Peter, was retiring as executive chairman of Linfox.Lindsay, 89, and his wife, Paula, are currently in Europe escaping Melbourne’s winter chill. Lisa Fox, their eldest daughter and co-chair of the Fox Family Foundation – a major supporter of the NGV – was spotted among the guests at the opening of Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson’s exhibition, Mercy, at the National Gallery of Victoria on Thursday night.Lindsay and Paula Fox, currently in Europe, pictured attending the 2023 NGV Gala.Getty Images for NGVThe Kjartansson exhibition is a bit of a trip. One of more unusual pieces on show is a video work, Me and My Mother, in which every five years Kjartansson asks his mother, Icelandic actor Guðrún Ásmundsdóttir, to spit on him. Weird.Kjartansson was at the opening on Thursday, where instead of giving a speech, he led a toast to the exhibition by singing an Icelandic folk/drinking song. Art always delivers!Fiona Byrne is the CBD columnist for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.John Buckley is a CBD columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.Kayla Olaya is a culture reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.From our partners