Living As a Moon

In memory of my father, who loved books.

I’m not going to pretend that when I was just myself I was always happy. There were plenty of times I was fed up with being a twenty-nine-year-old retail worker with a tendency to put on weight. I worked at Mademoiselle Coquette Fashions as assistant floor manageress, and it wasn’t any picnic. You’re not allowed to sit down in those jobs: you’ve got to look your best so as to give the customers confidence, and some of them are right pains in the butt, but you can’t say a word back. The other girls there were a great bunch, though, apart from Shonagh, and you got twenty-five per cent discount on all the clothes. Some good labels too. I was actually saving a bit of money when I worked there. Not because I was paid much, but because I was still at home with Mum and Dad, and not minding it. I was able to go out most Friday and Saturday nights to the pubs and clubs: I was seeing a fair bit of Nigel Nesbitt on most of those nights. Nigel is noise abatement and signage officer at the council, and has a house of his own. I could’ve done a lot worse than Nigel, like Shonagh’s Morgan, who would snort anything and flatted with five other losers. It was a routine sort of life, but a lot of people had worse.

Estelle Page was the reason I became more than just myself. Estelle was originally from Darwin, but came down to Sydney, where she pretty much took the place by storm. Her face was suddenly on all the mags, she was doing gigs at all the best night spots and mopping up guest appearances on the television. She started off as a singer, but there were plenty of better-looking girls with better voices too. What Estelle realised was that she was a natural stand-up comic — sassy, lippy and tons of confidence. The punters loved the sexual banter and quick repartee between the songs better than her singing, and she saw the potential. There were plenty of guys who did stand up comedy, but hardly any women, well not in Sydney that I can think of. A couple of gag writers, a good manager with all the contacts — the girl’s a star. You have to say she’s got something.

Right away people said she looked like me: well, I looked like her was how they put it. Even without any imitation of clothes, or mannerisms, everybody said I was the spitting image of Estelle Page. Even before she was on television, people who saw her at the clubs noticed the resemblance. One of the reps coming to see Mr Littam was the first, I think. As he was walking past me at the specials rack he suddenly reared back. ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘I’m seeing double. You’re a sitter for that woman comedian I saw last night at Dominoes. It’s bloody snap, darling.’ I was fitting security tags on the garments, and didn’t know what he was on about.

I soon did. As Estelle’s star rose, pretty much everyone knew her, and those who saw me recognised the similarity. Sure, she was a bit taller, and had her teeth whitened, or capped, or something, but she could have been a twin. There were the big boobs, big eyes, round face, the smile, short neck, heavy thighs, even the Kelly nose — the whole ensemble I spent time looking at in the mirror, deciding how to accentuate the positives. It was spooky, really, to sit at a table in Dominoes, or in front of the television, and see how much we were alike. And Estelle had trademark habits that were so easy to copy, like the ‘duh’ pose with head forward and mouth open at the conclusion of a punchline, and sitting with her knees wide apart when wearing a dress.

Sooner or later I was bound to play on it, I suppose. The first time was the Christmas staff party. I wore a slutty, low-cut lace blouse, full skirt and slingbacks, which were the sort of things Estelle liked for her act. Sonia and me made up this bit of patter about Coquette Fashions, the staff and some of the regular customers. The party was at the Littams’ place and there must have been more than thirty people with partners and everything included. I did the duh look and the knees apart. People just about wet themselves, and raved about it most of the night. Only Mrs Littam didn’t like it, but that was because it wasn’t ladylike. She didn’t like Estelle Page, she said. Couldn’t abide smut coming from a woman, and in public too. I hadn’t been offensive, but I looked so much like her, didn’t I.

Mr Littam thought it was classic. He asked me to do a turn at the Business Association’s fundraiser for the East Balmain Hospice. He offered me $200 of his own money: a sort of indirect donation. You don’t know when you start out on something where it’ll take you. Hundreds of people do an amateur turn, and that’s the end of it. For me it was just the start. I recorded some of Estelle Page’s television spots on
Better Believe It
. She became a regular there in no time, and her backchat with host Ricky Ryall became the sort of signature sign-off for the programme. I got her mannerisms by practising them in front of the TV, and did my hair in the same dizzy bouffant style.

People afterwards seemed amazed that I could be so like her, but the thing that was really unusual was that I had no nerves at all. I’d never even been in a school panto before that, never sung in a cruddy band like Shonagh, or been karaoke mad like Ellie and Natalie. Over three hundred people at the Business Association’s fundraiser, and I went on the stage and did Estelle Page without hardly raising a sweat. It was that easy. You learnt the stuff and the moves, and you looked out into the lights, and the laughter came back at you like a warm, uplifting wind. I didn’t tell people, but I was surprised how easy it was: being someone else was a complete disguise, like wearing a full mask at the ball.

I was a natural, said Wayne Esler, a complete natural. Wayne came to see me being Estelle at the Beach Carnival cabaret a few weeks after the fundraiser. He had his own showbiz agency for impersonators. I had no idea such agents existed, but he was full-time at it, and had an office above a computer shop in Annandale. He had almost anybody that mattered on his books — the prime minister, Elton John, Russell Crowe, Rupert Murdoch, Nicole Kidman, Olivia Newton-John, Robert De Niro, Hugh Jackman, and several Tom Cruises, Clintons of both sexes and Elvis Presleys. ‘You’re a natural, Estelle,’ he told me. He called all his impersonators by their stage names, and the habit spread. ‘You’re not just a dead ringer, but you’ve got the accent as well, and more than that, you belong on the stage. Not a nerve in that gorgeous body.’

I’ve never liked Wayne, but I’m not going to make him out worse than he is. He isn’t a financial cheat, and after the first time he tried it on with me, he’s stuck to his word about being strictly business. He put his hand on my boobs, to compare them with Estelle’s he said, and I told him I was having none of it. ‘Fair enough, darling,’ he said, ‘you can’t blame a man for trying,’ and he never came on to me after that. He’s got no class, but he’s a shrewd bugger about sniffing out jobs and money. Some of the impersonators thought they could do better going it alone, but that didn’t work for any I know, and they all came back to Wayne, or dropped out. Robbie Williams hung himself when he got too fat for his original; Clint Eastwood ended up selling Aboriginal tourist curios in Alice. On the other hand there’s Goldie Hawn, who married a wine millionaire from the Barossa Valley. It’s getting enough regular work that’s the thing, and getting people to pay a decent appearance fee. Until you’re in the industry you don’t realise how many people want everything for nothing. It’s for a good cause, they say. You’ll really enjoy the crowd there, they say. We’re a non-profit organisation, they say — ‘Yeah, but we’re not,’ Wayne would say.

After the Beach Carnival he contacted me officially, and asked me and my parents to come in to see him if we were interested in me being Estelle Page professionally. Dad and I went to his one room and alcove office above the computer shop on a wet Thursday morning. The rain spat on the window behind his desk, and the posters advertising his clients lined the walls above the coffee machine and filing cabinets. Brad Pitt, Tina Turner, John Clarke, Prince Charles, Kevin Rudd, Mel Gibson, Bryan Brown and so on. And sporting heroes that meant nothing to me, although I did recognise Ricky Ponting. The outlines seemed to blur just slightly in the flicker of the fluorescent light. They were both true and counterfeit at the same time: you knew there was something not quite right, but couldn’t put your finger on it.

Someone told me Wayne Esler had been a primary school teacher in Queensland, and had some sort of breakdown there. He doesn’t speak much like a teacher. He has a lot of hair on the back of his hands, and favours light-coloured formal shirts. He’s more than average height and weight, but has these very small feet. Sometimes when I see him standing, I wonder about the small amount of shoe that shows from his trousers, and half expect him to overbalance. He’s got this really nice leather jacket that he wears on special occasions. I checked the label once when it was lying in the back seat of his car as he took Prince Charles and me to a corporate do in Birchgrove. It was made in Milan. I can always tell the wonderful suppleness of Italian leather. Somehow even that doesn’t give Wayne any class, though. But then if you’re not sleeping with him, or married to him, all you want are the gigs he drums up and the money.

He said to Dad and me the thing was I had a good chance to do well as Estelle. Not only being a natural and that, but the closeness of the physical fit, my voice, and because Estelle had got famous suddenly so there wasn’t much competition around. He said we’d be surprised how important it was to get in early; that impersonation can become a brand almost in its own right. All we’d need to do physically was to have special built-up shoes for the height thing. Maybe the teeth. ‘How much do you get paid at the clothing shop?’ he asked, and when I told him he reckoned he could guarantee fifty per cent more over a year with twenty per cent of the hours. Dad and me were pretty impressed. We decided to give it a go.

‘You can always go back to retail and be none the worse if it doesn’t pan out, love,’ Dad said. That showed how little we knew then.

You’ve got to hand it to Wayne: he’s professional in his way. I didn’t do any gigs for more than two months. I worked on being Estelle every day, and Wayne saw to the special shoes and the job on my teeth. He advanced money for clothes even more tarty than Estelle’s. That’s the thing with successful impersonation, he said. Everything has to be just a bit more pronounced, slightly more obvious. Not a lot, or you fall into parody. There’s such a fine line, Wayne told me. He had a gag writer come up with a bunch of jokes that could easily be adapted for almost every occasion and venue, and I learnt Estelle’s songs too.

A league club dinner was the first gig I did. It was to farewell some big guy transferring to an English side. Wayne drove Dad and me there because it was the first time. I got $500, and that seemed a lot of money, even though twenty per cent went to Wayne. Wayne didn’t come just out of kindness, of course. He wanted to see how I’d go: whether I’d go down with that sort of crowd and if I could hack it. He knew what each of his people could do, and what they couldn’t. He said he didn’t put his people beyond their comfort zone. ‘I knew you were a natural,’ he said afterwards. ‘There’s a few timing things, and you need to pick the right punters from the audience to come on stage, or you’re buying trouble, but you nailed it, Estelle, nailed it.’ Dad reminded him of my name, but Wayne took no notice. ‘We can swing right into lining up appearances, I reckon,’ he said.

It’s exciting at first, being on stage, being the focus, having the laughter gust towards you and the applause follow you off stage. And if a few guys shout out they want to see your tits, well that’s part of being Estelle Page. There’s always an element of excitement, but the more you do it the more you wonder what’s happening to your own personality, your own life. Because you’re not in control, see. My friend Elton John said it’s like shadow dancing, and we’re the shadows. Elton and Kylie Minogue became my best friends. A lot of the impersonators on Wayne’s books I hardly saw. The politicians, sports stars and moguls appeared at very different sorts of functions. I might just see them briefly in the office, or on the stairs. There was one time I did a show with Kevin Rudd at an Australia Day in Dubbo. We travelled together and stayed in the best hotel in the place. He was a nice guy, but very reserved off stage.

Elton pointed out to me that impersonators are either fixed, or double-sided: he meant some were always in the role, and some took a lot of trouble to be unrecognisable when they weren’t in character. He was right. The top Elvis Presley wears beach shorts and his head’s shaved; Dolly Parton’s always in character and loves creating a stir in supermarkets. Elton has a lot of theories about what this says about them, and what the psychological effects are. A good deal of it went over my head, but he got me thinking. He and Kylie and me did quite a bit of stuff together. Elton has an MSc and had been a polytech tutor for years before going full-time. I think he might be gay, or maybe he’s just so good as Elton John. It doesn’t worry me. Wayne knew that the three of us got on well, and he worked up a bit of a three-bill package that did very nicely. Elton would accompany Kylie and me, and do his own big solo hits as well. I was the comic element, of course, and expected to have the odd wardrobe malfunction. We did two Australian tours, and sell-outs over the ditch in Auckland and Wellington. You get to know people so well when you travel and work together. All those pressures, and the potential for rivalry, but we stuck together. It was great money too, for Wayne and us.

The high point for me was April last year. Estelle Page was at the absolute height of her popularity, and Wayne persuaded the television channel to run a competition for a double as part of her six-part series. The competition segments were in the middle of the shows, peak viewing time, and Estelle herself judged the final. It was a close thing there between me and Estelle from Melbourne, but I won. I think Wayne had financial talks beforehand with Estelle’s management, but that’s showbiz. A lot of the contestants were amateurs, and didn’t really stand a chance with professionals. The Melbourne Estelle was great, but she suffered from nerves in the final. I always have the confidence that I’m an almost perfect physical fit and a natural as well. Hundreds of thousands of people saw it on television, and Wayne said we’d be able to pick and choose our gigs from then on. ‘I always said you’re a friggin’ natural, Estelle, didn’t I?’ he said.