The Bananas in Pyjamas’ doomed trip to Moscow

0:00ABC Listen. Podcasts, radio, news, music and more. Hi, it's Sam Hawley from ABC News Daily. The podcast that brings you one big story affecting your world each weekday in just 15 minutes. He has a very personal issue with Zelensky. Zelensky can't praise him enough, seems to be at the core of it. He hasn't thanked him enough. When he challenges him, President Trump doesn't like it. Join me for ABC News Daily. Find us on ABC Listen. This podcast was produced on the lands of the Awabakal and Gadigal people. G'day, Matt Bevan here. This is If You're Listening. A few weeks ago in our episode on the bizarre things Vladimir Putin is doing to avoid death and ageing, you would have heard a familiar voice.

0:57He's not the same figure who once paraded shirtless to prove his masculine strength against weak Western rivals. The unmistakable wry delivery of former ABC foreign correspondent Eric Campbell is a regular part of our show. Last time I spoke with Eric here, we talked about an incredible report he did in Taiwan that showed extraordinary commitment to the craft. It rather hurts. I think probably 2.5 kilos is my limit at this early stage. As well as other highlights from his reporting on Taiwan and China over the decades. But today he's back to talk about his time as the ABC's correspondent in Russia from 1996 to 2000, including a truly unbelievable story we've been looking into involving two other ABC icons who ran into some serious trouble in Moscow.

1:45Fun story, but it's one that Eric actually only knows part of. We've done some digging and we'll piece it together with him. Eric, welcome back. You landed in Moscow in 1996. What was it like to be a foreign journalist reporting from Moscow at the time? It was absolutely amazing because I'd grown up watching, you know, James Bond movies about the Soviet Union. To actually find myself living in Moscow was stunning. I was thinking, how lucky am I? And also, in 96, it was still very Soviet. You know, people still wore furry hats. The cars were all old Russian jigglies and larders. The streets were disgusting and the snow turned to slush. There was nowhere in the entire Moscow region to buy a decent coffee.

2:41But it was so much fun because it was so free. This formerly, you know, totalitarian country, all the rules had fallen apart. You could do whatever you wanted as a journalist. So every couple of weeks, I'd go and say, as the first Western correspondent to see this, they didn't give a rat's what I was doing. Back then, they had bigger things to worry about. Westerners were kind of allowed to just do their thing. And Western media was coming into the country as well. And this is the story that you talked about in 1998. Let's have a listen to what you said at the time. From the coal mines of the Arctic to the far reaches of Siberia, Russia is facing a cultural invasion unlike anything it's seen before. Oh my goodness, I so wasn't expecting what just happened there.

3:30You know, you were looking at pictures of dreary Russians walking through cold, frozen Moscow streets, and then suddenly I'm looking at B1 and B2, the bananas in pyjamas. B1 and B2, yes. Are you thinking what I'm thinking, B1? I think I am, B2. Why are we looking at B1 and B2 here? Why were B1 and B2 in Russia and speaking Russian? Well, in the Soviet times, television was very much a state-controlled affair And you would see what they deemed to be appropriate But after, you know, the end of communism People were just getting stuff from everywhere And at the time, it may be hard to imagine now, but Bananas in Pyjamas was the bluey of its time. In every country in the world, it was fabulously popular with anyone under the age of four,

4:16for reasons only people under the age of four can understand. But I once filmed the parade celebrating 10 years of the reunification of East and West Berlin. And it was led by B1 and B2, B1 and B2. And pirate copies of Bananas in Pyjamas have been circulating around Russia for years. And a friend of mine, an Australian who had started a business to import Australian television programs, had got the rights to Bananas in Pyjamas and sold them to Russian television. And the ABC sent over two banana suits to publicise it. programs had got the rights to Bananas in Pyjamas and sold them to Russian television. And the ABC sent over two banana suits to publicise it. Bananas in Pyjamas have crossed the former Iron Curtain to become the hit program for Russian children.

4:57Broadcast to a potential audience of 180 million people, it's a new success story for Australia's balance of payments. Bananas are just part of a bounty of Australian television that's taken root across the Russian Federation, from steamy soap operas to period dramas to high school heartbreaks. Okay, I just need to pause it there because that is the most bizarre image I've ever seen. It's Eric standing in Red Square in front of the fabulous and famous domes of St Basil's Cathedral with B1 and B2 walking around in the background behind him as though they just happened to be there while you were doing the report. Yes. I thought, well, let's take them up to Red Square, the most iconic part of Moscow,

5:40which would be visually appropriate. And also they'd be guaranteed to be arrested because even though Russia had failed, its dictatorship had fallen apart, it still had this useless army of FSB officers and security personnel hovering around, scratching their underpants and just doing nothing. So, of course, we walk into Red Square and immediately we're pounced on by an army of people in bad suits with bad haircuts and all very good television. Just why large bananas are striking such a chord remains as mysterious as ever. But it's clear Russian children feel the same appeal as in the West. The same is not true of Russian security forces. At this visit to Red Square, both B1 and B2 were nearly arrested.

6:23I've been watching the reports that you and other ABC correspondents did from Lennon's tomb around that time in the 1990s and there are, like, goose-stepping soldiers doing changing of the guard in front of the tomb and that kind of thing. Like, it was being guarded like Buckingham Palace is. It's a very strange sort of a ceremonial guard that they had there protecting Vladimir Lenin. So, yes, I imagine that you would have stood out a bit and they would have showed you a bit of interest. Yes, they pounced, they pounced. But fortunately, because so many children were already aware of Bananas in Pyjamas, a group of children came running up, singing Banani the Pyjami and, you know, explained what it was

7:04and they had kids and they sort of let us go so b1 and b2 escaped unscathed australia may be beaming into the living rooms of russia but cultural understanding still has a long way to go eric campbell abc news moscow so there's children swapping the bananas there in red square to To drill down on this, just, you know, I don't want to spoil the magic of the bananas, but it wasn't the actual B1 and B2 actors inside the suits, was it? No, it was Russians dressed up as bananas. OK, so you had a couple of local Russians... Yes. ..in the B1 and B2 costume. Getting a much sought-after gig, yes. Okie dokie. Now, the thing is, you know, obviously you had a bit of a tussle with the Red Square Guards at the time

7:49but then there was a little bit of drama that happened after this. Let's have a listen to this. Bananas in pyjamas. It was kidnapped and held for ransom. They were stolen and there was a ransom note for 100,000 Australian dollars for the return of the suits. Legend, and I use that term explicitly, legend has it that they were stolen during a promotional trip to Moscow by the mafia and ransomed for as much as $100,000. The outfits were never recovered and Steve Price doesn't believe a word of this. OK, hang on. So that report from Channel 10 is saying Outfits were never recovered and Steve Price doesn't believe a word of this. Okay, hang on. So that report from Channel 10 is saying that the mafia somehow kidnapped B1 and B2 or the suits and held them for ransom.

8:35Explain exactly what happened here, Eric. I don't know anything about a ransom, but I do know that B1 and B2 were never found. But it wasn't the mafia. Mafia was a sort of generic term in those days for bandits. It wasn't until much later that the mafia became the system of government in Russia under the boss of bosses, Vladimir Putin. And these days, just everyone was a crook because you had to to survive. My producer, Adair, has been doing a bit of investigation into this story and has been doing some calls around the ABC to try and figure out exactly where this story about the ransom came from. And she's tracked down Graham Grasby, who was the head of ABC licensing at the time. He was responsible for the international marketing

9:18and commercial licensing of the Bananas in Pyjamas. The costumes were being sent around Eastern Europe to try and promote the Bananas in Pyjamas as a TV show that Eastern Europe and that Russia could pick up on. Adair called him up and she's given me his account of what happened. She says, after a photo shoot in Red Square with the costumes, the costumes were taken to the office of the ABC's TV distributor while Eric and I headed off to Friday after work drinks at the Australian embassy. The plan was to leave the Bananas in Pyjamas costumes in Russia with the ABC's television distributor so the local licensing agent and distributor could use them in future to promote the Bananas in Pyjamas show.

9:59The next morning, I woke up to a phone call from the ABC's TV distributor's Russian business partner who told me that the banana costumes had been stolen and whoever had them was asking for a ransom to be paid for their return. I do hope it was never paid because that was a bluff. That was a scam. Okay. So the rest of what he told Adair, he didn't agree to be interviewed, but he was happy to give Adair all the details. So he called his boss at the ABC in Sydney to ask what exactly they should do about this situation. He asked how much it would cost to replace the costumes. And it turns out the costumes were worth $20,000, $10,000 per suit, $20,000 together. My God. I had no idea. I know. Clearly the ABC budget for this sort of thing was significantly higher in the 90s than it is these days. The idea of the ABC sending two $10,000 banana suits to Russia for promotional purposes and leaving them there. And Graham was told that he had authorization to offer that amount for getting the suits back.

11:08That never came across my desk. I was sort of cut out after the initial filming. This is the sort of thing, Eric, that sort of happens behind you and I. I didn't realize that management was involved in ransom negotiations. That's why they get the big chairs in the Harbour Views, because they know what they're doing. Okay. The rest of the story is that Graham rang the business partner in Russia and told him that the ABC was prepared to pay $20,000 for the safe return of the costumes. He responded that that wasn't enough and that whoever had the costumes wanted more money. Graham then called Sydney to figure out exactly what he should do from this point. Sydney and he agreed that there was no point in offering any more

11:50than what it would cost to replace the costumes, and so the Russian business partner was advised that the ABC was not prepared to increase the offer. He should have opened with 1,000. Yeah, yeah, yeah, perhaps. But if Blue and Bingo were stolen, that would have been a much bigger issue, I think. That's true, that's true. Graham was due to depart Moscow that day. He said that he was quite happy to leave Moscow because he was not particularly comfortable to be in a place where suited character costumes were stolen and held for ransom. He said that there wasn't any meetings with Russian mobsters, there was no bag full of cash, and that he has not been back to Moscow since. Yeah, look, I probably should have a keen memory of the details of all this,

12:31but this was just another day back then. It wasn't anything particularly out of the ordinary. Now, the true story, and I know because I was at the centre of it, was that my friend who was selling Australian programs to Russian television had a falling out with his Russian business partner who took the suits and wouldn't give them back. That's incredible. So the Russian business partner wasn't passing Graham's offers on to some mystery third-party thief. He was the kidnapper. What a wild story. I should emphasize I did do serious political stories as well. This was obviously, as you say, just another day for you in Russia. The other strange chapter that you were in Russia for was the end of Boris Yeltsin's

13:11leadership. For much of your posting, nobody knew how well the president was. Or if he was alive. There was no consensus on whether he'd actually kicked the bucket or not. Okay. How did that come about? How infrequently did you see him? Well, you'd never actually see him. Occasionally, the Kremlin would put out statements that he was too busy to meet Helmut Kohl because he was out hunting bears or something. And they once put him on a snowmobile to show how active and virile he still was. The thing is, you didn't see him start the snowmobile or stop the snowmobile. It was like a weekend of Bernie's snowmobile passing through frame without any clear idea of what happened to it, how it stopped or what it banged into.

13:54But a couple of times, say, when Clinton visited, he would have to come out and it was kind of weird. You'd see, yes, he is alive, but didn't seem to be all there. And a couple of times when he just turned his back and started facing the back of the room and Clinton had to turn him around and it was just sad. For months and months and months, no one was quite sure who was running the country, if anyone. But I think that's one of the reasons why people were so relieved when Putin came in. Because even though he was this horrible little bureaucrat, he seemed sober, strong, young, virile, and they thought at least we have a strong leader back in charge. But oh God, some people must yearn for the days of

14:38Yeltsin, this lovable old duffer, snowmobile riding bear hunter, compared to what they have now. My favourite Yeltsin story is, of course, the story about him in Washington. Do you know the story about him in Washington looking for pizza? No. Okay. So this is according to a book by Taylor Branch, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. Basically this is a story that Bill Clinton relayed to him that Yeltsin's late night drinking nearly caused an international incident during one of Yeltsin's visits to Washington in 1995, after Yeltsin was found near the White House late at night, out in the world, out on the streets of Washington, in his underwear, not fully dressed, and apparently asking people around him where he could find some pizza to eat.

15:28And the Secret Service basically grabbed him, bundled him up and returned him to the Russian embassy and handed him back over to the FSB and just said, I believe this is yours. And they put him back to bed. And this is a story that Bill Clinton likes to tell people. But yes, just such an incredibly different thing to Vladimir Putin, who, despite all of his faults, can sit on live television for four hours answering telephone questions from Russians, you know. If it is, in fact, Putin and not one of his doubles, but that's another story. I was only face to face with Yeltsin once when he visited the southern city of Samara and strange enough, we were invited to come around and cover his tour of a factory. So every foreign

16:12journalist in Moscow went down, bringing their ladders so the camera could climb up behind the crowd to film and everything. And there was this mass of people following him around a factory as he walked aimlessly, not following the tour tool but just walking from one point to another as ladders were toppling over and crowds were falling into each other. And I actually stepped away from this madness and stepped into a broom cupboard. And to my shock, about 10 seconds later, Yeltsin walked into the broom cupboard and saw me and we looked at each other and he was as startled as I was and I was about to say, Boris Nikolaevich, may I ask you about your current health, etc. When FSB people came and just shepherded him out of the way and gave me a filthy look.

16:52And that was as close as I got to him. But I did notice, which I hadn't noticed before, he was missing two fingers on his hand. What? And I looked it up. And when he was a child, he picked up a grenade left over from the war and it blew up and blew off a couple of his fingers. But that was my only up close and personal experience with the saviour of democracy, temporary as it was. Your posting in Moscow was between 1996 and 2000. Eventually, the ABC shut down our Moscow bureau. But I did go back to Russia many times after that, until they stopped giving me visas. Well, they stopped giving you visas and, in fact, in 2023, at the beginning of the full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine after the invasion, the Russians published a list of sanctioned

17:34Australians. And you were on that list. I was with Ita Buttrose, Andrew Bolt, and Gina Reinhart, a list which I never imagined I would be on. Yeah, illustria's company. Was that a surprise to you when you found yourself on that list? It was because I'd been doing endless stories about Putin, and none of them terribly complimentary. I mean, it was not very factual, but the fact is he does horrible things and he kills people. And so I was just reporting that. But eventually they caught up with me. They didn't seem to mind when I was a full-time correspondent there, but eventually, over the years, they got a bit more serious about monitoring journalists and took it all a bit more personally. And some hack in the embassy here decided to add my name to this bizarre list.

18:14I don't know what got I to buttress on the list. No, to be honest, I was slightly annoyed that I wasn't on that list. Well, were they listening? Clearly they were. Yeah. I mean, you should have been on. Anyone should have been on. It was you. There was a Guardian story at the time making fun of me for apparently not being important enough to be on that list, which was very nice. Yeah. You, after you were sanctioned, continued to report on Russia and on Russian media and you went to Latvia to meet with exiled Russian journalists. What did you learn when you spoke to them in Latvia? Well, there are good people, you know, who are fighting the system as hard as they can, but it's very hard inside Russia

18:49and you really do have to turn yourself into an exile to continue to fight from abroad. And the question of that is, A, can you ever go back? And B, are you having any effect when you're abroad? But they were doing their best. And yeah, to many Russians, Putin is as appalling as many in the West find him and the Ukraine war is as criminal and they still cling to hope that things may get better. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because Russia is a country where the people there tend to actually be quite engaged in media. Television news in particular is extremely well patronised by Russian people. They watch television news a lot and there's a lot of it in that kind of environment. What kind of success can these people who are outside of Russia and

19:31don't have access to Russian TV broadcast antennas have on the opinion of Putin and Russia? At the time when I was in Latvia, they still had surprising reach through YouTube and through Telegram. Novaya Gazeta, the last independent newspaper, was still publishing on Telegram to millions of readers. YouTube was the most popular source of information for Russia. You know, TV Rain, the last independent TV station, was still broadcasting again to millions of people. But since then, the Kremlin has squeezed these media so much they banned Facebook, they've put all sorts of algorithms in to slow down Telegram and to block it. They've tried to replace YouTube with a different format. And it's now even a bit dangerous to be using YouTube to follow these things.

20:17So, I mean, they're fighting a very hard battle now. And, you know, when I asked them, when do you think you'll go back to Russia? They're all saying a couple of years. Well, that was a few years back. Yes. I don't think they're ever going back. Russia? They're all saying a couple of years. Well, that was a few years back. Yes. I don't think they're ever going back. Russia, in the meantime, has banned Peppa Pig. Ah, yes. I don't know whether Bananas in Pajamas is still being broadcast on Russian television, but Peppa Pig isn't. No. What's that about? Well, as you know, because Putin told us all, in the West, we don't have mother and father, or we don't have men and women. We have 14 different genders.

20:45That's right. And you can't say mother or father. You have to say parent one, parent two, parent three. You know, we all know it's true. You know, just Putin finally had the guts to come out and say it. So the Duma, which is Russia's parliament, which is basically a giant ventriloquist dummy for the Kremlin, they started parodying the same things. And they talked about one of the most popular children's shows on YouTube back then, Peppa Pig. And they highlighted an episode of Peppa Pig where they're all talking about their parents and a polar bear talked about my mummy and my mummy. And they showed two polar bears who were the same sex. And this was Peppa Pig being a little bit inclusive and showing the kiddies that, you know, if you come from a different family,

21:29you shouldn't feel different, you know, which was obviously part of the Nazi satanic plot in the West to undermine morals in Russia, stop them reproducing soldiers to fight in Ukraine. So, yeah, I mean, they spotted it and good on them. They picked it. Absolutely. Yes, yes. Thank goodness that the Russians have got the stones to stand up to the writers of Peppa Pig. I want to ask you this lastly. A couple of weeks ago, Tucker Carlson, the very influential American right-wing former Fox News broadcaster who is now spreading his opinions on various social media networks, did this interview with Jacob Rees-Mock. I saw it. Yes, I thought you might have. One of the things that he said was this. The government of the United Kingdom is punishing

22:18and prohibiting people and ideas it doesn't like. Russia is not doing that. So how is— What? To you. You can't say what it did in Russia. It's doing it in spades. It's beating people up. It's arresting them. It's murdering them. In your country, Russia has put fewer people in jail in the last year for social media posts than the U.K. has. They just accidentally fall out of windows in Russia. Jacob Rees-Mogg's reaction to this is one for the history books. It's just an extraordinary amount of confusion from Jacob Rees-Mogg. What do you think is going on here? Do you think that Tucker Carlson, you know, there's a lot of discussion about whether Tucker Carlson is, you know, benefiting in some way from Russian influence operations, or he's getting money

23:04from Russia or that kind of thing? Or do you think it's more along the lines of he just agrees with the Putin-spread ethos of if you can't say mean things about LGBT people, then you don't really have free speech? Yeah, or is it just that he doesn't really believe anything but he's a performing clown who does whatever he will to get a good audience. I mean, he was taken around Moscow to some nice restaurants and supermarkets and marvelled at the bounty and the cheap prices and everything. He's rather like the lefties who managed to be toured through Ukraine by Stalin, who completely failed to notice the famine. That's what Lenin called useful idiots. They've been making use of them for a long, long time.

23:48Yes. What better place to finish this than to finish it with a quote from Vladimir Lenin. Fantastic. Eric, thank you very much for coming on and talking to us about this. If only I could go back there. One day, you and I. With all the exiles. One day, I'm sure, we'll be able to go back to Red Square and we'll take some banana suits banana suits Take Bluey and Bingo Bluey and Bingo and have them march around in the back of a report in Red Square I'll hold you to that if it's ever possible Eric Thank you very much for coming on Israelis are heading to the polls today in a closely watched election. One question which has been looming over the campaign is why, more than three years on, there has still been no State Commission of Inquiry into the events of October 7th,

24:352023, with opposition leaders promising to set one up as one of their first acts in government. In recent weeks, a stream of reports saying that Benjamin Netanyahu was warned before the attack on that day has brought the issue into sharper focus. On Thursday we're looking into what a potential inquiry might examine and whether the attack could have been prevented. We're also going to do another Q&A in a few weeks. This one will be about the US midterms and very excitingly it will be live streamed on our brand new YouTube channel. So please send in your questions, preferably in voice note form to ifyou'relisteningatabc.net.au and subscribe to our YouTube channel so you'll be the first to know when we're going live. I'll catch you on Thursday.