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I'm Mike Boris and this is Straight Talk.
Something that I was a part of has been a part of so many people's lives
in hopefully a positive way.
That blows me away.
Hands in the air, rock-a-bye-a-bear.
Bear's now asleep.
Greg's not feeling real well.
Tonight, the story to save the life of band member Greg Page.
Collapsed on stage with a heart attack.
It was at the end of a show and I felt exhausted and I collapsed.
We always think that could never happen.
I never thought I'd have a heart attack, let alone one that nearly killed me.
I guess it was that moment that I realised that I had to do something.
Now the Yellow Wiggle has his own charity, Heart of the Nation.
The point is this.
When somebody drops in front of you,
we need people to understand how to respond to that.
You could save a life. It's so powerful.
Greg Page, welcome to Straight Talk.
Thank you, Mark. Good to be here.
All the younger staff.
And here we've been quite excited about this.
Particularly Jess, our producer.
And you're one of the Wiggles.
One of the original founding Wiggles.
One of the old Wiggles.
The old Wiggles, yes.
Well, you're still a Wiggle.
It's a bit like when you're a President of the United States.
You're always a President of the United States.
That's an interesting way of looking at it.
Yeah, so once a Wiggle, always a Wiggle.
I'm dying to know, in the presence of Australian royalty,
how the hell would you become a Wiggle?
Who would become a Wiggle?
Who would become a Wiggle?
I can't come up with the idea of it.
Where the bloody name come from and the whole genius behind it.
Okay, so really it was Anthony Field who was a member
of the Cockroaches originally.
So, yeah, Anthony was studying teaching at university,
preschool teaching with Murray who also ended up being in the Wiggles.
Then I went to university with them because I was a fan of the Cockroaches.
So I grew up in high school listening to the music of the Cockroaches.
I thought, I love this music and I wanted to be a musician
so when I did work experience in high school, I reached out to their management and said,
I want to be a roadie.
I want to be a sound engineer and I ended up doing my work experience for the Cockroaches.
So I got to know Anthony through that and he said, well, look, you can't be a roadie all your life.
You don't want to be lugging boxes upstairs when you're 50 years old
and now that I am 50 years old, he was certainly right.
I don't know what you're doing.
He said, what else would you want to do?
And I said, well, look, I look back on my time at school very fondly
because I had teachers that came into the classroom with their guitars and they'd sing.
I thought if I can use music in education, I thought that'd be great.
He said, well, you need to come to my campus, see what I'm studying, early childhood teaching
and you'll find that there's 500 girls and only six guys so the odds are pretty good there.
I went to his campus, had a bit of an orientation there and the course sounded fantastic
because early childhood teaching is all about freedom of expression through music and through art
and learning through play as opposed to when you get into primary school,
there's a lot of stencils that you have to fill out.
There's a lot of structure to learning and it is that way but when you're in early childhood,
it's all about just letting the child explore life and explore their environment
and that's how you learn and I just love that concept.
So really when I was in, it was the crossover between first year and second year.
It was in the summer holidays.
Anthony rang me and said, look, I want to get together and write some songs for kids
and see what we can do with that.
We literally got together and wrote a bunch of songs.
Yeah, and Murray.
So Anthony, myself and Murray and another guy who was in the group at the start,
Philip Wilcher was his name.
He was one of the music staff at the university.
We all got together.
We wrote some songs.
We recorded them very shabbily on a four-track recorder back in the day
and it kind of just grew from there and it was just Anthony's idea that he'd been listening
to music for kids from all over the world, from Canada, from America, from England
and of course here in Australia, we have this great institution called Play School.
Yeah, I remember it.
It's been going for so many years on TV.
But the beauty of Play School is that it is so directly targeted at children.
There's some double entendres, not double entendres in a dirty sense,
but there's adult content there for the parents
and that's what makes it great co-viewing for parents to watch with their children.
So it is kind of, well, we held it as a standard for us to aspire to with The Wiggles.
So when you talk about, you know, how did it start, why did it work,
it worked because we,
we were educators, we were teachers, we loved music
and we put that all together with this aspiration of being like Play School for kids but with music.
So it was the first time there was kind of a rock band for kids on the music scene in Australia.
So you actually went to early childhood teaching course like uni or something like that.
Macquarie University.
But they were ahead of you.
Yes, they were two years ahead of me.
Two years ahead of you.
But were they musicians as such?
So I'd grown up playing guitar and I'd played in high school bands and always wanted to be in a band.
But I guess you look at life realistically sometimes you think, okay, how many musicians are there in the world?
What's the chances of becoming successful at it?
So I thought, well, if I can't be on stage, I want to be behind the scenes.
And that's where the idea of becoming a roadie or a sound engineer came to my mind.
And I thought, well, I'd love to work in the music industry.
But then it came to me.
It kind of took a turn when I met Anthony and ended up being in the Wiggles.
But Anthony was in the Cockroaches, which were quite a well-known band throughout the late 80s.
But can I say late 80s?
So late 80s, yeah.
So you're a Sydney boy.
Yeah, you grew up in Northmead, I think.
On the northwest side of Sydney.
Have you ever looked back and gone, oh, my God, I did an early childhood teaching course.
I was going to be a teacher.
I always aspired.
I loved singing, but I was never really going to get in a band that may be super successful.
And I thought to myself, oh, my God, how did that turn into the Wiggles?
Oh, all the time.
Yeah, like each stage of it.
Yeah, well, that's the thing, right?
It didn't just kind of go bang, the Wiggles were on the scene and we were huge.
And so each step along the way, you'd achieve something that you thought was not going to be possible.
And you'd sort of look around and go, wow, this is great.
You know, we've got a record deal with the ABC.
Then, wow, we're doing live shows now.
Wow, we're actually getting paid to do live shows.
You know, we used to do parties for 300 bucks.
Then we sold tickets to our shows.
And that was so each little incremental step along the way to that success that we had at the peak in probably 2004,
each step we'd just kind of look at and go, wow, we never thought this would happen.
So to look back now in retrospect, it's even more mind blowing.
It's pretty amazing because your model or your aspiration was to do play school or to be like play school.
In that you may use fun for little kids.
And I remember my kids watching play school, and they were born in the 80s.
And you used that as a model that you aspire to.
Of course, you guys went on to far outstrip anything play school ever did.
Mind you, play school was very successful and wasn't your model, different style of model.
I'm dying to know who decided to dress you up the way you guys got dressed up.
What was that process?
How does that work?
And when did it come into the formula?
Did you start off that way?
Like when you used to do parties for 300 bucks a party?
How did it kick off?
So to the clothing, the costumes.
Yeah, yeah, costumes, yeah.
So our very first album, we had a different look and it was terrible.
It was like just black pants with a multicolored shirt.
So whatever multicolored shirt we could find, just something that was bright, you know, supposedly visually attractive.
But if you look at the album cover, it's not visually attractive.
And that's why we changed our look for the second album that we did.
And the reason why we came up with a new look was because Anthony had said,
just go black pants and a solid color on top.
We'll all have a different solid color on top.
Instead of in a white shirt.
Yeah, instead of an awful, yeah, gaudy, horrible looking shirt.
So Jeff already had a purple kind of skivvy at home.
Murray already had a red one.
So it was kind of set from that point that Jeff would be purple, Murray would be red.
Then Anthony and I went shopping together to try to find something because the photo shoot was the next day.
Well, skivvies, yeah.
We said skivvies.
We'll go with skivvies.
That was a bit of an 80s, 90s.
Yeah, it was a little bit retro even at that point, I must say.
We walked into Grace Brothers, the old Grace Brothers over at Chatswood.
We walked into the menswear department and on the back wall was a blue skivvy hanging up and we both saw it.
Blue's my favorite color.
So we both ran for the blue skivvy and Anthony got there first.
So he's a quicker runner than me.
So Anthony got blue.
Next to that was a yellow skivvy and I just took that one.
And it wasn't actually until a few years later, one of my old friends from school,
he said to me, oh, it's kind of funny.
You ended up with a yellow skivvy, isn't it?
I said, why is that?
He said, oh, duh, like our school uniform was a yellow skivvy.
And I had totally forgotten that.
Like our winter uniform right through primary school was a yellow skivvy.
So I went back to my school photos.
There I am wearing a yellow skivvy every year.
So it's kind of cool that I ended up in the yellow.
How did Anthony know that the color shirts, not the solid colors, but the pride of that,
how did he know it didn't work, Liam?
Or what, did you get feedback or something off the album?
Yeah, look, I think we probably did get a bit of feedback,
but we just looked at it.
And went, yeah, it just doesn't look good.
And I think then by that stage, we'd been at it for about a year.
And in Anthony's wisdom, he kind of looked at it and went, you know what?
I think we can do better.
I think we can do something that's a stronger visual thing.
So let's go with black pants and a solid color on top.
And that just stuck then after that.
Because it became a way that kids could identify each wiggle.
So like I became the yellow one, Murray was red.
And it just stayed that way.
And it's a very cool idea.
Yeah, very simple.
But it turned out to be really cool.
I mean, I guess you probably didn't realize the impact it was going to have
at the time in terms of the colors.
But kids are simple, aren't they?
I mean, I don't know.
You're an early childhood teacher.
You know more about kids' behavior and the psychology of kids.
I raised four kids, so that's all I know.
Well, you'd be quite qualified to comment too, I think.
Yeah, but only a sample of four.
But you've performed in front and had feedback from thousands and thousands
and probably hundreds of thousands of kids over the years.
So you're a dead set expert in it.
But it's interesting how simple kids are.
And the assumption that kids are more complex than they really are is probably a bad assumption.
And we're talking about kids under what age now?
Well, so early childhood.
So at the time, we were kind of targeting kids.
Well, we ended up appealing to kids from the age of 18 months through to six years.
But we were really targeting two or three years old, you know, that kind of age group.
Kids are fascinating because kids are so innocent.
I was going to say naive, but that could be deemed derogatory.
They're not naive.
They're just innocent.
They haven't been exposed to the things that adults have been exposed to.
So when you're wanting to communicate with kids, you've just got to strip things right
back and try and think a lot, as you say, more simply, you know, they're not complex.
But I guess this is the point, at that time in their life, in early childhood, that is
when they are exposed to the world and they're like sponges, they soak up everything around
Things they hear, interactions they have with people, things they observe, and it becomes
part of their psyche or part of who they are as an adult.
And so, you know, they say, show me the man at 30, and I'll show you the man at three
or show them, show me the man at three, I'll show you the man at 30, because we don't actually
change that much throughout life.
We absorb things, and we grow and develop, but it's so much based on who we were at that
In our life at three years old.
When you, and maybe you can tell me this if you don't mind, Anthony obviously was a bit
of a driver in the business.
Like in a strategic sense.
But what about choreograph?
Like, you know, in terms of the jumping around that you guys did, I mean, you know, and the
role playing that each one of you had, you know, different roles.
Who worked all that stuff out?
Like, or was that a, you know, collaborative thing amongst all of you?
It was something that changed over time.
So it began as just the four of us.
You know, we were literally just a band.
And, you know, that's all our experience was, just being in bands.
So we had no idea of it being a show or a more complex entertainment experience.
It was just, hey, we'll get up and we'll play some songs.
And it just developed over time into something more theatrical.
I mean, to the point where-
Theatrical is a good word.
Theatrical is a good word.
Because it did become a lot more theatrical over the years.
So we did bring on a choreographer around about 1996, I think it was.
So about four years after we'd started, you know, we kind of got to the point where we
were thinking, okay, well, yeah, we were just coming up with dance moves.
A lot of our songs kind of suggested what the choreography might be.
So for instance, we had this song called Rock-A-Bye-Ya-Bear.
And it's very simple.
It's everybody clap.
La, la, la, la, la.
Bow to your partner.
Then you turn around.
Hands in the air.
Rock-A-Bye-Ya-Bear.
Bear's now asleep.
So the choreography is dictated by the lyrics.
A lot of our songs were kind of like that, where you could draw the choreography from
what we wanted the kids to be doing to marry it with the lyrics.
But then it kind of got to the point where after doing four or five albums, the songs
got a little bit less like that and a bit more story-based or character-based.
So to go back to your question about how do we determine the role playing in the group,
the four Wiggle characters were very much just based on who we were.
So, you know, one of my traits in the group was that I was a magician.
I love magic as a kid.
In real, in real.
Yeah, I love magic.
So that became one of the things that I did in the group.
Anthony, one of Anthony's traits is that he loved eating.
And that kind of also came from real life.
Like one of Anthony's nicknames that we have for him was Sumo.
And that came about because back in the early days of touring here in Australia, we'd be
away for four weeks at a time and, you know, we'd go to RSL clubs for dinner.
And it wasn't uncommon in the early days that Anthony would have two meals.
Eat the buffet out.
He'd have one meal and he'd go and order another one.
And he'd say, man, you eat a lot of food.
And he said, yeah, I'm like one of those Sumo wrestlers.
You know, the Sumos eat a lot of food.
And so his nickname became Sumo because he was like a Sumo wrestler.
So that's where his trait of eating food came in the Wiggles.
And Jeff being sleepy, well, I don't know where that actually came from, to be honest.
I do know where it came from.
It's not tied to who he is, but Murray loves playing guitar.
That was his trait in the Wiggles.
So it did come from a lot of our own personal things that we enjoy doing.
When you're putting a song together, are you tactically trying to appeal to the parents
to, for example, to tell kids it's time to go to bed?
The thinking was appeal to the kids.
Appeal to the kids, but deliver content or messages that we know are good messages, like
through what we understand about teaching.
And I remember hitting the ground running about, so the thing with kids, it was not
just the knowledge we did was always based on how knowledge of early childhood psychology,
but also classroom management strategy.
So in our live shows, we'd always get back to how we learn how to manage children in
a group situation, which sounds kind of silly, but it's true.
I mean, you've just got to manage kids properly in a classroom or else you have chaos, because
kids can be so spontaneous.
So you've got manage them and we'd do the same thing in live shows.
a very simple way of doing that but also to appeal to parents was we didn't say
hi boys and girls how are you all we'd say hi everyone hi everyone great to see you and
automatically we're including the parents because they're part of that audience and so that's just
such a simple thing to do but it's to do with language and how you talk to people that makes
them feel like they're part of what's going on so whilst we didn't um strategically target parents
we strategically included them it's obviously brilliant because it was extraordinarily
successful and and you know obviously i want to congratulate you and everybody as to how you put
it together i'm sure it's not just the four of you now there's a big big big team in those days and
and even today i guess but as a as a business especially but getting to kids is
sometimes could be a bit challenging because i i imagine you would have said i said
are we manipulating the kids into something
or nothing bad but i'm just saying are we dragging them along sort of uh the way we want them to go
and if so you know you're quite powerful in that regard what are your obligations did you often
have to sit down and have ethical conversations with your with each other look i don't know that
we had to have too many ethical conversations i think we had a couple of ethical conversations
and certainly they came up more so in the context of merchandise right right so i remember one
conversation about
a fast food company that wanted to sponsor the wiggles and we just thought look it's not really
in line with promoting healthy eating so we had to say no to that the other one that i can remember
was in terms of consumer products so products that we'd sell with our logo or name on the merch
merch merch that's right um so in terms of merch um it's funny like we used to call it merch back
in the day but we didn't kind of think people knew what that term was but now everybody has
so yeah so merch consumer products um somebody wanted to put our images
so our so we had cartoon characters developed of each of our wiggles characters somebody wanted
to put those on kids underwear and we just thought no that's not right you know you can't have our
images on kids underwear that's not right so those kinds of things you would have to be very careful
about because the way you are perceived is very important and if you you know if you didn't think
those things through you just go yeah no problem and quite innocently you could do that you could
just go it's it's just our picture on kids underwear but other people might not be able to do that so
i perceive that a different way particularly at a different time like yeah you can because you
know there's no there's no uh secret about the fact that we today judge what happened 20 years
ago by today's standards that happens all the time and they can actually bring a brand down
quite quite quickly and it seems to be a bit of a um a pastime for some to do that um and it's a
bit unfortunate but just the way things are it is and you've got to think for the future
but you can't predict what people people's values and judgments are going to be
well you've got to try to be i guess you've got to try to i think at the time we were just trying
to base what we did on what we'd learned about children and how they think and what appeals to
them and what was known at the time and what we knew at the time too is uh three males that had
gone through university we knew that we could never be above uh suspicion you know you couldn't
go into a change a nappy change room on your own as a male and change a baby's nappy you had to
bring a female with you you couldn't go into a change a nappy change room on your own as a male
so you couldn't do those kinds of things you had to be very careful in those days you know so that's
30 years ago yes we were told in university you know you cannot be left alone in that kind of
situation with a child you've got to be always there with somebody else even if it's your own
child well probably not if it's your own child but certainly in a child care center or you know
if you're looking after kids you know you can't take them to the bathroom on your own you've got
to be very mindful of the fact that you're not above reproach you're obviously an entertainer
you know you're creating theater which obviously you love it's so cool
it's fun but that's sort of on the surface and we just talked in it about sometimes having to
consider the ethics but what do you really see yourself as what what was the real role of
your organization well i think we were trying to deliver educational content to children in a way
that they could play at home so getting kids up and dancing getting them moving getting them
connecting things that they see as part of the wiggles with what they experience in life so
it's being that conduit between the tv and life so that we're showing them things that you know
happen in real life connecting them to songs that they always remember so you know it's crazy today
you know jess your producer will probably know fruit salad yummy yummy it's so when you talk
about were we manipulating kids many people have said were you brainwashing kids like you know
fruit salad yummy yummy well i guess we kind of were we but we weren't doing it purposely well not
purposely but i guess we didn't know how much these songs were going to stick around in their
heads for years to come and so now as the original wiggles when we do shows for kids that are probably
jess's age and they're gosh they're getting into their late 20s now some of these kids
we do shows for them they come along and we play to 10 000 people all singing fruit salad yummy
yummy because it takes them back to those days of being four or five years old three years old
and they remember those times in their life and that's so powerful to connect with them and to
connect to that that time in your life when you had no cares in the world and you know the wiggles
were something to listen to and it's just so joyous when you're in a room full of 10 000 people
singing fruit salad yummy yummy there's not a care in the world yeah and it's quite a nostalgia is
quite a powerful thing too it's a very powerful thing it's actually it must spike something in
the brain that sort of to drop a whole lot of dopamine or serotonin or something through the
reward system to them that has last last with them you know if they were through the reward system to
at the time. Now they're 26. It's lasted them for 23 years. Yeah. Very powerful. But I think that
can be the case with so many things that as an adult, you'll smell something, you'll see something,
you'll hear something that takes you back to another time in your life. And when it takes
you back to that childhood experience for a lot of people, hopefully it's a really positive
childhood. And we did have somebody come up to us at one of our shows recently who didn't have
a good childhood, had a terrible childhood. But she said to us, she said, thank you so much for
what you did because it gave me something to escape to. Some relief. Yeah. And look,
that's just so awful. And that's probably the case for some kids, of course, that they don't
have a really positive childhood. But if the Wiggles could have brought them some positivity
in that terrible time, if they can then go back to that now through reconnecting to the Wiggles
in their adulthood, hopefully that can bring them some of that feeling.
Something that they can then harness now as an adult and use that in a positive way to move
forward. Listening to you, it's always been a fantastic experience for you in your life.
Incredible. I can't explain. Like blessed.
Absolutely blessed. Yeah. I mean, to have gone from wanting to be a musician to thinking that
it'll probably never happen, but still wanting to be in the music industry and then have that
experience. It wasn't planned. So a lot of people also think, gee, it was a great idea you guys had.
Well, it was a great idea, but the idea was never a plan. The only plan was to create content
for kids that was going to be developmentally appropriate, which means it was directly
appropriate for a three-year-old or a four-year-old. It wasn't targeted at adults and
talking down to children. It was at their level. That was our only goal. And because we hit that
goal, it became what it became. And the journey was just so wild. It was incredible to think we
played Madison Square Garden.
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I'm at Darden in the US and we played so many venues around countries that we'd never dreamed
that we would play in. Just blows me away. If you look back on your career, entertaining kids
with educational content and being incredibly successful as a group, what other things do
you think this gave you that you would never, that the kid from Northmead would never have
ever gotten in his life? Oh, look, I don't know. I don't, I guess so many things,
but I don't really sort of quantify them or assess them. Like friendships? Oh, look,
definitely friendships. I mean, there's so many things. I mean, I can't imagine if someone like
you, if it was me, I would be, I would lay in bed in the mornings when I wake up, think, you know,
you've been through some health issues and A, I'm alive. Yeah. That's great. And I don't,
I'm not trying to be morbid. You wake up and you're, I'm alive. I'm good. And then you think,
wow, my life. I mean, we talk about it being a blessing, but what, what did I get out of all
this stuff? I mean, I've got great friendships. Um, you know, so what you recognize everywhere
else, but you've traveled, you've done things that the kid from Northmead, who used to wear
the yellow uniform in the winter, may never have had unless he crossed paths with these
individuals. Yeah. And you went and did what you did. Look, I guess in a spiritual kind of way.
Yeah, that's right.
That's what I'm talking about.
Yeah. I'm kind of connected to the fact that something that I was a part of has been a part
of so many people's lives in hopefully a positive way. To me, that's like the biggest blessing you
can have. The fact that without setting out to do it, we had a connection with so many people
who are now in their twenties, but still are so connected to the Wiggles and have such fond
memories of it. That blows me away, right? It's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's not,
it's not like, um, I don't know, like you can't dream that from, from a young age. You can say,
well, I want to make music and I want to be a musician. And you can say, okay, well, I did that.
And I'm grateful for that. I'm so grateful for that. But for the fact that it actually went
further than that, it wasn't just making music. You didn't sell just a million albums like a good
musician might, which you've actually changed, you've changed some people's lives and you've
had a massive effect, which has lasted as on the exam, we just gave for 23, 24 years to some of
these individuals. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And in a positive way, it's funny, like you talk about selling albums. I wouldn't know how many
we've sold because I don't try, I don't measure things in that way. Um, yeah, I just honestly
think how blessed I am to have had those experiences with the guys, of course, and the
friendships and the fun that we had. And when we get together now and do these shows, it's like
getting on a bike again, the camaraderie that we have, it's just so well embedded in our relationship
that we can, you know, you know, sledge each other and do all that kind of stuff that we did
30 years ago. And it's just, you know, that kind of deep rooted friendship. So I'm very grateful
for that. But I think the overarching thing for me is just to put my head on the pillow at night
and know that what we did far exceeded anything that we set out to do, but to know that we've had,
as I say, hopefully a positive impact on all these kids, a number of people that say,
you know, I went into music because of you. I learned guitar because of the,
Wiggles, those kinds of things. And my fruit salad because of the Wiggles.
Yeah, yeah, that's right. I'm now fit and healthy because I listened to those
healthy messaging songs that you wrote. So I just find, you blind me away. I mean,
to me, it's absolutely amazing. I mean, some people, some of us bet ourselves on the back
because we might've done a few things, but the impact you've had on globally, it's not just,
it's not just here in Sydney or Australia, but it's a global impact. It's bloody amazing. It's
really amazing. And it's still going. And so today,
Wiggles has a different makeup. How does that, how do you view that? So just as, I guess,
is it just a response to social change? Yeah. So a few years back now, maybe two
years or so ago, Anthony came up with this idea of having the fruit salad TV Wiggles. You know,
we're all fruit salad. We're all different. So it's like a bowl of fruit salad. There's
people from all different cultures. So there's now eight Wiggles, I guess. So there were four
There's eight Wiggles now that represent all different backgrounds, which is,
I think Anthony said when they released that on YouTube, it was their biggest
content, like in terms of views, like it just went berserk. So it shows that there is definitely
a market for that. And yeah, that's responding to social times, but it's also a reflection on
the fact that had we done this from the start as a business, the Wiggles back then wouldn't
have been the Wiggles. We would have gone, right, well, hang on. We've got Jeff, who's
Chinese background, Chinese Australian background. Then we got Murray, Jeff, Murray, Anthony
and Greg, all sort of white Caucasian males. No women. We should have had a female in the
group, right? It wasn't put together for the purpose of being a commercial thing. It was
just four mates getting together and making music. So the fruit salad TV Wiggles is a
reflection on the fact that times have changed to the point where, you know, it was no longer
To sort of say, well, it just happened because we were four blokes, four males who got together
and we were friends. It needed to reflect the current times and be socially responsible
Can you tell me about the impact on your health of being a Wiggle?
Yeah, it was hard physically. We did-
What does it mean though? Like road, on the road all the time? What is it?
Well, in the early days here in Australia, we were kind of on the road.
We were on the road for about 10 months a year. And when I say on the road, we would
do like four week tours at a time and we'd be away for four weeks at a time.
Family come with you or just on your own?
Back in the early days, Murray was married. So in the early days, then later on, Anthony
and I got married also. But by that stage, the touring had changed a little bit. So in
the early days, we'd be away four weeks at a time. Then we'd come back home for maybe
a week or two, then we'd go away again. Then that got too much. So we had to do, you know,
kind of a week at a time. Then we'd come back on weekends to see the families and things
like that. Then when we started touring the US, that was, you know, five weeks at a time,
three times a year. But we'd also be doing Australian tours, New Zealand tours, UK. It
was a lot of touring. The hardest touring, well, I'll just go back to Australia for a
second. When we toured in Australia, we'd do three shows a day. So we'd do a 10 o'clock
show, an 11.30 show, then a one o'clock show. Some days we'd do a fourth show.
At 2.30. And the show, if anybody's seen a Wiggle show, they know there's a lot of
jumping around. It was hard physically on the body, like the knees and the feet. So
that was physically hard. By the time we started touring America, the American shows were different.
So we'd do two shows a day in the US. They were longer shows. They were like an hour
and 20 minutes. So in Australia, it'd be a 50 minute show. So four 50 minute shows a
day or three 50 minute shows. The US was two, one hour, 20 minute shows, and they'd be a
30 minute show, then a 7.00 PM show. And then after those shows, we'd travel overnight
on the bus. And that's the bit that I found the hardest because I couldn't sleep on the
bus. It was just so hard to sleep and get that rest that you needed to get up and do
the same thing again the next day. And that's what really took a toll on me, I think. And
also not knowing that I had this weird condition called orthostatic intolerance, which was
probably caused by the fact that I don't retain fluid very well. So all that sweat that
I was putting out during wiggle shows and all the drink that I would drink, like Gatorade
and water, I wasn't retaining that fluid that I was putting back into my body. So I became
very dehydrated, which resulted in my blood becoming very thin, which then results in
low blood pressure, particularly when you stand up. So I started collapsing. I would
faint when I stood up. In the show?
Not in the show, backstage. Right.
So when, the funny thing with this condition is when you're moving around, you're fine.
It's when you stop moving that the blood pools in your legs and you feel very, very, very
faint and giddy and collapse. Yeah.
And so that orthostatic intolerance, which basically means you can't retain water.
Well, no, it means you can't remain static in an upright position.
But it was caused by the fact that my body wasn't retaining the water.
But then later on, you had a heart attack later on.
Later on. So yeah, that was early in the days. That's why I left the Wiggles in 2006 because
of that condition.
It was debilitating.
Yeah. Didn't know what was wrong. And at that time, I actually had my heart thoroughly
investigated and the doctors all sort of said, yeah, that's pretty good.
Because that would be the first place to go.
If you're feeling anything, so you've got a heart problem, potentially.
Yeah, that's right.
So they did all the stress tests.
Stress tests, yeah.
You know, like they put you, did they do the calcium scores?
No, not the calcium score, but like an angiogram.
Oh, you went the next step, okay, an angiogram.
Make sure there's no blockages and the valves are working and you got a tick of approval.
Yeah, yep. All good.
But then what caused the heart attack?
So that was in 2006 that I left.
And look, my diet hasn't been all fine.
Fruit salad, yummy, yummy.
It's been a lot of meat and potatoes and not very-
Also traveling on the road.
Yeah, it's not great.
And so particularly then because of the orthostatic intolerance and feeling lethargic, I would
tend to eat a lot to try to get the energy to do the shows.
So I did put on quite a bit of weight in that time.
So my cholesterol did go up.
So around about 2007, 2008, maybe, no, that would have been later.
Might have been 2010.
My cholesterol was 6.6.
So I had to get that down.
But at that point in time, because I'd had all the tests previously and I thought my heart was good,
I didn't bother doing any other tests because my blood pressure was fine,
no family history, no diabetes, none of the other risk factors.
And having got the cholesterol down, I didn't know there was any issue.
And then so literally, yes, as you say, I had a massive heart attack on stage at the end of one of the original Wiggle shows in 2020.
The heart attack was so massive, though, that it sent me straight into cardiology.
And, yeah, heart attack and cardiac arrest are two different things.
Yeah, right at the end of a show.
And what happened?
Well, I just went down.
I didn't know what was going on.
I had no symptoms.
I just was at the end of a show and I felt exhausted and I collapsed.
I remember seeing it on the news.
And luckily for me, there were people around me who knew what to do.
So what did they do?
What did they do?
Well, they assessed me.
They checked, was I okay?
So these are first aid people or something like that?
Well, these were just...
So the first person to come to my aid was a GP in the audience who was there with her
daughters that night to watch the show.
And one of her daughters saw me collapse and said, Mom, Greg's collapsed.
Remember, he's got that issue.
Maybe you should go and check that he's okay.
Now, when she said that issue, she was talking about that orthostatic intolerance that I
So Therese was the GP's name.
She came up onto the stage, made her way over to me and assessed me, realized that I wasn't
Now, when I say not responding, they couldn't get me to wake up, so couldn't get me to answer
any questions, couldn't get me to squeeze her hands.
That's not a good sign.
That's when you've got to call triple zero.
So they called triple zero.
Then they realized that I wasn't breathing.
Now, when somebody's not responding and not breathing, you've got to start CPR because
if you don't, that person will die within minutes.
So luckily, they started CPR.
So Therese, together with a lady by the name of Kim Antonelli, who was working for the
Wiggles that night, she'd done first aid as well.
So she came and helped Therese start CPR.
Then, whilst this was going on, the other three Wiggles were doing an encore of Hot
So there's recess going on backstage for me, and they're out doing Hot Potato.
The drummer for our band that night, Steve Pace, he was also first aid trained.
He saw what was going on with me, and he thought, geez, I've got to help this guy.
So he got up, finished Hot Potato, got up, and then came over and started doing CPR as
By that stage, another...
Another member of the audience, Grace Jones, who's a nurse, she came up to help, and luckily
somebody, one of the security guards at the RSL Club, brought a defib in, and they were
able to use it to shock me and resuscitate me.
A defib in, a defibrillator.
Defibrillator, yeah.
A portable defibrillator.
An AED, of which I was saying earlier that, before the show started, that I have a couple
of these in various places in my life, because Guy Leach introduced me to him many, many years
ago on a podcast, actually, but one of our podcasts.
I want you to tell me about the defib.
I mean, like, I've never known...
I don't even know how to use it.
I mean, I often sit and think, well, what would happen if I have to use this?
You were just telling me earlier that these things are structured through the process.
You don't have to be trained in how to use one.
You don't even have to know how to use one.
Just have it there, right?
That's the first thing.
And that's the problem a lot of people don't understand, that it's great to have it, but
you've got to know that you don't need to be trained to use it.
In fact, it's just got that power button there that you can hit that, and it'll start press
walking to you, yeah.
Training scenario.
That's probably pretty loud.
That's all right.
Call for medical assistance.
So if you haven't called triple zero, call them straight away.
Remove clothing from patient's chest to expose bare skin.
Pull green tab to remove pads.
So I've already removed the pads because I was showing you before, but they're the pads
that you place on the skin.
And the pads show you where to place them on the patient, right?
Apply pads to patient's bare chest, as shown in picture.
It's so clear, right?
Press pads firmly to patient's bare skin.
So once you've got the pads on the patient...
It will assess the heart rhythm.
So I'll just stop that there, but it'll keep talking you through what to do.
This device does everything.
You've just got to help it do what it needs to do.
So it will assess the heart rhythm and whether or not the patient needs to be shocked.
So you can't shock somebody and hurt them, right?
This does all the decision making.
If the patient needs to be shocked, there's two types of models.
There's automatic and semi-automatic.
The automatic one will just say, patient needs a shock.
Stand clear, and it will send the shock.
If it's semi-automatic, it'll say, stand clear, press the orange shock button or whatever
shock button it is on that type of model.
But no matter what type of AED it is, they're all pretty similar in the sense that you just
need to turn it on, listen to the instructions, follow the instructions, it'll do all the
work, and you could save a life.
It's so powerful.
Where does the Heart of a Nation charity fit into all this?
So Heart of a Nation is a charity that I started...
I started up about three or four months after I survived, and I realized that there needs
to be greater awareness in the community about AEDs and the role of CPR.
Because when I got out of hospital, I realized there's a lot of AEDs in the community that
One of the reasons I identified as to why I've never seen them is because they look
like a first aid cabinet.
They're just a white cabinet on the wall.
With a green and white sticker on it, right?
Yeah, and a little light keeps flashing on and off.
Yeah, that's right.
And I'd just walk past them and think, well, that's just a first aid cabinet.
I had no idea what an AED was.
So then I thought, we've got to try to make them more visible in the community.
We've got to let people know where they are.
So Heart of a Nation began as an initiative whereby if you've got an AED at your workplace,
register it with us, let us know, and we'll send you out a bright yellow sticker.
And this is where yellow comes back to the story, right?
A bright yellow sticker to put on the front door or window of your business so that people
coming in and out or walking past get to know that there's an AED at that location.
Because if somebody goes into cardiac arrest just around the corner,
down the street, if they don't know you've got an AED, they can't use it and they can't
How do you get the yellow sticker though, Luke?
Yeah, so you log on to our webpage, heartofanation.com.au, and there's a place there where you can sign
up and register your AEDs with us.
Once you register, we'll send you out the sticker.
You stick it on the front door or window of your business and let people know that you've
got it there and let them know that if they need to use it, that they can.
How about if someone wants to buy an AED, they don't have one.
So what do you guys recommend?
Yeah, so look, we can help you there with that as well.
We do sell AEDs and the base model one is one that looks like this.
There's a couple of models that look like this.
They're made by HeartSign.
They're probably the ones that we recommend the most.
They're not the only ones we sell.
We do sell other ones, but yeah, it's a good place to start with that one.
So look, if you do want help with buying an AED, you can log on to the website and get
in touch with us and we'll guide you through that process.
We'll show you the different options and let you know the different features.
And Heart of Anation has been going for how long now?
Almost three years.
Almost three years.
And do you feel as though you're getting the message through?
I mean, this is a great forum to do it.
I mean, these are the sorts of forums I guess you need to go to.
And I'm very happy to accommodate that.
I mean, apart from the fact I get to hear a great story and meet one of the Wiggles
which is amazing.
And you're using your position of fame, so to speak.
Profile, I call it.
Yeah, profile, I guess, yeah.
Profile to do a good thing.
There's not enough that happens in this country at least.
You don't have any issue with doing that?
Does it open doors for you to find?
And look, when I survived, when I woke up in hospital and I saw my cardiac arrest on
the TV, on the news, I think that was the moment I realized that I-
You saw yourself, you saw the fall.
And that really, you know, it was very bizarre.
But I guess it was that moment that I realized that I had to do something because I could
Do you know what I mean?
It's not like, it's not about ego.
It's not about saying, look at me, look at me.
It's about saying.
That happened to me.
You saw it on the news.
That could be you.
And the fact is that 27,000 Australians every year suffer a cardiac arrest out of hospital
and only 10% survive.
90% don't survive.
And we can change that.
We can change it with greater awareness about how to identify someone in cardiac arrest
that we need to call triple zero, start CPR and have an AED.
And you know what?
Only 2% of cases of cardiac arrest.
Only 2% of cases of cardiac arrest.
Only 2% of cases of cardiac arrest.
Only 2% of cases of cardiac arrest.
Get an AED used on them before the ambulance arrives.
And what's interesting about that too is maybe what we need to do is all of us need to start
to take notice where the AED machine might be.
Because most of us don't look out for these sorts of things.
We're not, it's not part of our psyche.
It's not part of, we always think that could never happen to me.
I never thought I'd have a heart attack, let alone one that nearly killed me.
One that sent me into cardiac arrest.
My wife's a cardiac nurse.
And she would always say to me,
don't have so much butter on your bread.
Don't have so much butter on your toast.
Don't eat the chicken skin.
Don't have so many sausages.
I thought I was okay because I could exercise without any of the symptoms or warning signs
that they talk about.
So I was playing competition cricket, competition tennis.
I was walking seven and a half Ks in an hour every day.
But I dropped dead.
And it could be anyone out there in the community.
We need to have this on our radar because it's happening.
Not every day, everywhere you happen to be.
There's about 80 people that drop dead and need to be resuscitated.
And I guess I'm going to finish off with something that I find really curious and I'm a great fan.
Is that you have a massive Elvis Presley collection.
You're a big fan of Elvis, are you?
And what's interesting about that is both he and his daughter died from cardiac arrest.
There's obviously you've always been an Elvis fan so you did know he was going to die of cardiac arrest.
Do you see the interesting sort of parallels there with what, I mean, you're obviously a massive fan.
Yeah, look, I'm a massive fan of, I mean, I love Elvis' voice and his singing.
What really appealed to me about Elvis when I went to Graceland was how philanthropic he was and how spiritual he was.
So it's the stuff about Elvis offstage that fascinated me most about him.
So getting to know his story and seeing, you know, walking through Graceland,
which is now, well, was his home.
It's now a museum more or less and you can walk through there and you can feel that connection to him as a person.
So that's why I started collecting items to put on display here in Australia.
So I've got a small museum out at Parks.
It's quite small and I have scaled back now.
It's not something that I'm actively doing anymore because my time is spent on my charity.
But that understanding who somebody is behind the scenes, I've just found that so interesting.
And yeah, as you say.
I mean, everybody dies of a cardiac arrest.
Cardiac arrest means your heart stops beating.
Everybody's going to die of a cardiac arrest.
It's what causes it and at what time it happens, right?
So when it's unexpected, that's what we call sudden cardiac arrest.
That was my cardiac arrest.
I didn't know I had heart disease.
It wasn't diagnosed.
So for my family and my friends, it was like, what the hell?
These guys just dropped dead.
They're the types of cardiac arrests that we're talking about.
Now, Elvis, look, there's a lot of talk about what caused.
It's his heart attack or cardiac arrest.
Even Lisa, I don't know.
The point is this.
When somebody drops in front of you, we need people to understand how to respond to that.
And whatever the journey is in life that you have, whatever your connection is to other people,
whether it be a celebrity or whatever, we're all the same.
We're all human beings.
Especially when the heart stops.
And I think that connecting to people through stories and their perceived commonalities,
in life, I think that's a really powerful thing.
And to look back on my life and think that these 20-something-year-olds at the moment
are connected to the Wiggles through the music that we created, well, it's an absolute blessing.
Well, you have lived a life of being a great storyteller.
And that got you quite a great deal of success.
But it seems to me you're still telling a story in relation to, you know,
you're telling your personal story now about how to save people.
And, you know, you talk about Elvis being spiritual.
You know, and having the sort of ethical views and the sorts of people he helped.
And to be honest with you, like, I never expected our conversation to end up there with you
because you're doing exactly the same.
You're pretty much expressing your own spirituality to all of us.
And you're still doing it.
You're still a Wiggle.
And you're still looking after.
Now you're not talking to kids so much under fives,
but you're now talking to those kids who were under five and now in their 20s.
And you're sort of saying to them,
hey, guys, just think about your health and think about, you know,
how you can help somebody else and remember the yellow Wiggle
and put a yellow sign on the front of a window or a shop front or wherever it is
where there is an AED to make sure that you can help someone.
I think that's still magic, mate.
You're still doing the magic.
I appreciate it, mate.
I appreciate this.
This has been unreal.
Thank you for listening to another episode of Straight Talk with Mark Boris.
Audio production by Jessica Smalley.
Production assistants, Jonathan Leondis and Simon McDermott.
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